Cash just came in on May 25th. Cash is a beautiful stocky boy withourfavorite boxy head. He is 6-1/2 years old and still intact. With no issues. Very friendly and loving. We noticed the first day he walked strangely. We asked his owners and they said he has never had any issues, other than about 2 weeks ago he tried to jump into the truck and missed, falling backwards. So we thought he might have hurt something. But he seemed to show more signs of something worse that s sprain or strain. He was not tip toeing so we did not think ACL. We thought hips or spine. We were going to have him neutered right away but decided to have his other issues checked first to see what is going on. His hips, knees and spine x-rayed as fine. So now we are looking at a neurological source. We are starting to think he may have
Degenerative Myelopathy. He is sometime dragging his rear when he trips running and stands with his rear feet tight together which makes him wobbly. We have even seen him with his back legs crossed while eating. Also found it the x-ray was a hugely enlarged prostrate about the size of a tennis ball.
UPDATE: 6-15-09
Cash, now being called “Cashew”, is doing better and we have seen much less of the weakness to his rear end, but still see some occasionally. He was neutered last Monday and acted like he never even noticed. We are hoping that the neuter will reduce the size of his prostate, the vet seems to think it will. He palpated the gland and felt that it was more hormone related rather than a growth. He has already been more regularllybeen able to poop, which is good. If Cashew is still here, we will have him re-checked via x-ray in a month.
Update 7-13-09
Cash is still here as no one has shown interest in him. We will have is his prostrate checked next week, but he is only slightly improved on his bowel control. He suddenly has to go without warning. When he feels it pass the blockage he will make a dash for the door but sometimes it catches him by surprise. He hate doing it and looks at us as if to say he’s sorry. He also has been getting the GUPLS once or twice a week. These are kind of like a combination of gastritis and a panic attack. We have learned to control them with Pepcid Complete and Gas -X and get him to relax and they usually only last about 10 minutes. They are just scary if you don’t know what they are. the first time we saw it, he was off to the ER, thinking it was Bloat.