limping and x-rays

[bonnienlouise]

Hi guys

Well I have bought a small bag of james wellbeloved which has 20% protein its the adult version but not the large kibble. She had one meal of it yesterday as we decided to phase it in and she spent the whole night up with what appears to be sickness and diarhea (apologies for the spelling) She appears to have eaten the entire bowl without chewing a single piece which makes me wonder if the large kibble may be better which is 23%. Is there a best way to phase in a new food as the poor little thing has gone through so much this week I want to make it as easy as possible.


Lou

[cravemoor]

The best way is to mix the new food in with the old food - gradually increasing the amount of new food you add. Hope Bonnie is on the mend soon.

[porgster]

Hi lou
I started george off on hills science plan which the vet recomended (which also happened to be that one they sold!!)
he did ok on that untill he was a year old, then started to get ill and had the runs, tried james wellbeloved but he just wouldnt eat it.
so ended up on chappie which he did eat. he had that for a few years but they changed it, you could tell by the color change
in the biscuit and the sickness and runs returned, he is now on bakers complete which has 23% protein and meaty chunks and lots of differant colors
and shapes and i put a tiny bit of my dinner in there too.

just to add to cravemoor's comment, a small hand full of new food in with the old and slowly increase it over the course of a week untill its just the new food

[PhiltheGeek]

I have avoided comment on this thread hitherto, because I have no knowledge of mastiff puppies. However I do know something about lameness. We established by x-ray that Clyde's near hind lameness was probably a result of hip dysplasia, though not a very severe case, and we have been successful in building up muscle and cartilage to compensate for the bone deficiency, with the result that the limp has disappeared.

As with the Dane who preceded him, Clyde has been fed on Dodson & Horrell's Chudley's Classic, which is 19% protein. He is of course 4 years old now and his exercise regime as well as the feed has contributed to the physical change, but since I haven't seen this feed mentioned elsewhere on the forum I thought it might be worth mentioning. I dare say tastes differ among mastiffkind as well as amongst humankind.

What I would say from my experience of horses, which weigh even more than mastiffs, is that it is easy to get too much body for the legs of certain types of youngster. Warmblood younsters, if you are not careful, can look like barrels on sticks when they are young, and it is not in their long term interest that still-growing leg bones should carry that sort of weight. I therefore agree with what has been said above about leanness being preferable (though not carried to the severe extremes in which we originally found Clyde!)

[bonnienlouise]

Hi All,

I just thought I would update as we have just had a phone call from the vets. The shoulder where he thought there was a problem is all clear and so are the hips which is good. Unfortunately there is a problem with her elbow which he called canine ulnar osteotony. She needs an operation where they will screw through the bone and cut through another bone. She will be out of action from what he said for around six weeks. We have got to ring him in the morning after deciding whether to get her the operation at the referal centre or whether we want it done at the vets. The vet has said that he has not done all of the procedures recommended by the specialist before so we are looking at having her referred to the specialist for the operation.

Lou

[cravemoor]

Hi Lou that is good news. I have no knowledge or experience of the condition canine ulnar osteotony but from what I have read on the net this is more commonly known as elbow dysplasia. Like I said, I have no knowledge or experience of this condition but I would be asking the question why does this op need to be done and can it not wait until Bonnie is fully mature ? She is by no means a mature dog and still has a lot of growing to do. Buster (aka Busterbaby) has elbow dysplasia on one side, diagnosed at an early age, and thus far this has been managed without the need for an operation - hopefully Busterbaby will be along to offer more advice. My only advice as an experienced Mastiff owner would be to think long and hard about whether or not this operation is really neccessary now or if it can wait - Bonnie still has an awful lot of growing to do.

[busterbaby2]

Hi there

I'm sorry to hear Bonnie has a bad elbow.

Elbow dysplasia is a term that covers several different problems with the elbow. From what I can gather ulnar osteotomy is a procedure that is used when fixing UAP.
UAP (ununited anconeal process) is the type of dysplasia Buster has, it's where the nobbly bit at the back of the elbow (anconeal process) is loose, this bit can be fixed back into place but also it appears that another opperation can be done on the ulna.

Buster also had turned out feet, caused form one bone growing faster than the other the vet said they could opperate by cutting a part of one bone out to even up the leg. I declined. The bones caught up with each other a bit, his feet are not perfect but they are good enough for him to lollop around on and cause him no problems

If I have got this right and the term your vet uses is a treatment for UAP (or even turned out feet), please think really hard before deciding on an opperation.

I discussed in depth with the vet what the options were for the future if we didn't have the op (the specialist recomened we try to mange things without the op to start with anyway). Basically, there was no guarantee that the op would give Buster limp-free movement (he get the occasional limp, or it shows if he is running), also even if the anconeal process rubbed on the elbow causing bony changes, it would still be possible in the future to have it fixed back in place as the bones can be 'cleaned up' - this is completely different to the things you read on the 'net! If any future op was to fail or his elbow be too bad to opperate on then an elbow replacement can be done.

Carefully builling up his walks has done exactly what the vet said - build up the muscles which support the joint This was done VERY gradually, to start with we wouldn't get more than about 10 yards in 5 minutes (he really had problems walking so I was not to push him).

Buster will be 3 years old this summer, there is still NO op on the horizen . He's doing great, in fact he's doing so well I've extended his walks again. His walk was taikng 45 minutes (brisk pace), but he has started to run around it in places, now it's done in 20mins, so we now also visit a huge open field where he can have a 20 min game of chase with me!!! (he does stay on his 32ft long-line). Wow - this is a pup that I sometimes had to help get up from being laid down - unbelieveable progress

I think you need to have a word with your vet and find out exactly what is wrong with the elbow and all the options they see as being available (there is always more than 1 option ).

If Bonnie has the same problems has Buster (UAP, turned out feet) then you can see Buster has done brill without the opperations.

Oh, I nearly forgot, here is a link to Elbow Dysplasia expaining more about it. http://www.liv.ac.uk/sath/conditions/elbow_displasia.htm

[pauloconnor]

So sorry to hear about the elbow but after the surgery things will be much improved

To add some further colour to the protein debate I recently heard from a good friend who is close to people with gun dogs that pet food manufacturers are allowed a sizeable +/-% margin of error when producing the nutritional information found on the side of dog food sacks - my understanding is that it can be as much as 5-10% each way

I've tried looking online to confirm or debunk this but cannot conclude either way. Before hearing this I thought they would be governed by relatively strict regulations. In any event it does beg the questions whether, unless you feed BARF or a natural diet, you truly know the protein content of your pet's diet.

Does anyone know what kind of regulation pet food manufacturers must adhere to? I'd like to prove/disprove this one.

Cheers,

Paul

[PhiltheGeek]

The Food Standards Agency have a pamphlet on this:

http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/feedguide2005.pdf

It says, in part:

"The labelling of compound feed by percentage weight of ingredients, with a tolerance of +/-15% for each declaration, has ... been reintroduced into law in England by the Feeding Stuffs (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2006 (S.I. 2006 No. 2808), which came into force on 17 November 2006."

Now it is unclear from this whether the +/-15% applies to the total or the component value. What I mean is, suppose a manufacturer declares 20% protein, it would surely be an absurdity if this were to be interpreted to apply it to the total, in which case it would mean a protein content of anything between 5% and 35%. Therefore I would assume that it applies to the accuracy of the 20% figure itself and means that the protein content must be within the range 20 +/- (15% x 20) = 17% to 23%.

I am not a lawyer, and I could be wrong here. From some of the comments I've seen on this issue, it appears producers were worried about commercial confidentiality and feared the wastage of expensive R&D if they were forced to label too accurately and their non-researching competitors simply copied their formula.

[bonnienlouise]

Hi everyone

Thanks for all the comments especially useful to read through busters history. Although we will still go to the consultation and go from there it will be good to go with more information. I would be inclined to say that our vet would immediately suggest surgery and was quite keen to do the op himself. He apparently seemed a it put out when we decided to go to the specialist instead but this was more because the vet had never done the all of the procedures he states are needed and the specialist was obviously more experienced. We will definately look at exactly what is needed and whether surgery is the only option. We have not seen the report from the specialist which the vet received so it may be that we get there on Monday and he doesnt think surgery is the only option.

If anyone could put us in touch with someone who has had the op that would be good just to get another perspective on it. Also just wondered as I have read about Synflex - is it as good as it seems? She is currently taking 100mg of norocarp a day at the moment which does seem to make a difference. But a lot of people seem to have had very good results with the synflex?

A strange question maybe but does anyone know why the vet would not want to prescribe metacam and prescribed the norocarp instead (in the past when she has limped he has always used metacam)?

Thanks again

Lou

[Admin]

Noracarp = NOVOX, VETPROFEN , CARPROFEN aka RIMADYL and our opinions on that medicine are very well known . I have no problem at all with saying I would never give Rimadyl to any animal and that one of my Mastiffs died fom sysptoms widely associated with the drugs side effects having been put on it. I wont repeat all thats been said before but feel free to research rymadil on Google and form your own opinion. I know you cant take what is on the web as gospel by any means but theres no 'massive repeated plumes of smoke without fire'.

Vets prescribe it because it is a highly effective pain killer without any doubt, its the unwanted side effects that bother many of us.

I will though ad that there have been strong calls to ban Rymadil in the U.S and it is not recommended there for use over more than about 10 days. If it is used then tests are recommended at regular intervals to check for liver damage. When our bitch died of rapid and total Liver failure guess what she was on ?

Regards

Ad

[cravemoor]

I would just like to add that we have used Synflex for many years and cannot recommend it highly enough. Synflex has liquid pharmaceutical quality glucosamine to assist in the rehabilitation of cartilage, reduce the progression of osteoarthritis, and significantly lessen pain from arthritis. It made a huge difference to Hunters arthritis and I know that other people have used it on their dogs and have been very pleased with the results - even my mum uses it for her 13 year Spaniel

[bonnienlouise]

Hi all,

I thought I would post an update as we have got back from the specialists. They decided that the best thing to do was a CT scan on both elbows as this would give a better indication of any problems in the elbow not visible on an x-ray. This was quite helpful as many people had been advising that elbow dysplasia can be managed with diet, restricted exercise etc so we were struggling as to whether we should go ahead with the operation or to try and manage the condition. We had also spoken to the breeder who suggested against the operation.

We sat down initially and went over the report he had done on the initial x-rays we had done, it turns out that she does have some evidence of dysplasia in both hips which had not been relayed to us by the vets. We then went through the ct scans and he was able to show us a comparison of the good elbow against the bad. There is a massive difference in the two elbows which is much more evident on the ct scan as it provides the 3d look image. I think the fact that the images showed such a poor condition on the bad elbow it was fairly easy to reach a decision. We have asked for copies of the CT scans so it may be possible to post them when they are received in the hope it may help others. He has said that he cannot guarantee results but stressed that she would have a much better chance with the op. When she was getting up whilst we left her for the ct scan they noticed that she was standing poorly on one of her rear legs so they also scanned the hock which has OCD.

So she has hip dysplasia in both hips, elbow dypslasia in one elbow and signs of arthritis in the other elbow and OCD in the hock. Wow that sounds awful when you read it back Although it is a major operation according to the specialist; I am confident that it is the right thing to do. The hock and the hips at the moment are going to be monitored, we are going to get her weight down a bit and use anti inflamatories.

Lou

[cravemoor]

Oh dear, that is not such good news - poor Bonnie I assume you have informed the breeder of the problems that have been found ? I hope Bonnie makes a speedy recovery.

[davemac]

When will people who breed mastiffs start to take notice of what is happening in the real world,How can they justify not having there dogs checked for hip and elbow problems, YES i know people will say you cant gaurantee anything by having tests done, but surely over time if everybody did then it could change,Dont breeders know the heartache they are causing