Is It Normal For Dogs To Pull Muscles Often?
Posted by: Alan in Cat Health Problem, tags: Dog's, Muscles, Normal, Often, Pull
I have a 7ish (not exactly sure of birthday as he is a rescue) year old miniature poodle of about 11 pounds. He is in good health. I take him yearly to get physical and no problems yet. The only thing I notice is fairly frequently he will hurt himself. It seems like once every 1-2 months he will jump off the bed or play rough with our cat (who is same size as him!) and hurt his leg and then for a 1-3 days he limps around. Everytime I make an appointment and then he is fine. Today I watched him jump up on to my bed and immediately squeel and now he is kind of limping. Nothing looks broken just looks like maybe he’s pulling a muscle. As I said he does this fairly frequently. Does it mean he needs more exercise or could something really be wrong with him. Any other time he is very normal and playful.
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January 24th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Is it a front or a back leg? It could be that your dog has a ligament injury like a ruptured ACL. These types of injuries take a long time to heal and can easily be re-injured before they’re done healing, or even after they heal with strenuous enough activity. It’s possible that the injury is not bad enough to require surgery, but even the smallest ligament injuries need plenty of rest to fully recover. Over-do it too soon and it’s injured all over again.
Back leg — that sounds like an ACL issue. Take a look at this diagram:http://www.michvet.com/library/surgery_c…http://home.earthlink.net/~tiggerpoz/id1…
Another possibility: patellar luxation. This one does require surgery to fix.http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?…
Patellar luxation is a very common issue in small breeds. It’s not due to injury but actually a hereditary condition. Next time you go to the vet you might want to bring up patellar luxation and ligament injury and see if the vet can determine whether your dog is suffering from one or the other.
January 24th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Sounds like an ACL injury — could be a small tear, not a complete tear. I’ve had it happen to mine. You have a couple of choices. Two are signficant surgeries (TPLO and intracapsular surgery are options) or you can crate her when she limps to make her rest, don’t put her in situations where she might hurt herself, and give her an appropriate dose of glusamine and condrotin (can be bought at health food store). As long as she’s not in horrible pain (complete tear) this can heal it’s self — the issue is that arthritis can form (thicking the knee) but at 7, you likely already have some arthritis forming, and in this sort of case, surgery will not help much.
January 24th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
I suggest not allowing him to jump off the bed. You can purchase steps made especially for pets at Walgreens for under $40. I’ve seen them on sale for $25. A little limp doesn’t necessarily warrant a trip to the vet. But, if your dog has hurt himself, you need to hold him still and treat the leg with a cold compress. I would suggest calling your vet to ask about asprin. Asprin can help reduce pain and inflammation, but is not appropriate for all dogs. I would ask your vet about this and a recomended dosage. If there are any cuts or scratches on the leg, use a hot compress, not a cold one. Otherwise, a cold compress should help reduce pain and swelling. Use the compresses a few times a day for about three days (10-15 minutes) each time. After that, use hot compresses to bring healing blood to the area.