Bad Hips - Quality of life - Page 4

I have a female that has pretty severe HD (I've known it since she was 10 months) and she is now approaching 9 years old.  I am just now considering the possiblity of euthanizing soon.  Her love of life and her drives have never dimished until recently and while I had to watch her activity level, she never seemed to suffer badly.  On days she over-did, I knew she would be feeling it the next day and I'd pop her an aspirin.  I have kept her off all other medications except for daily Glucosmine supplements.

This dog will never be a harding working dog but it doesn't mean certain death or surgery.  It has a very good chance at leading a happy life with moderate excercise as someone's loved pet.  Only time and the dog will tell. 

MI GSD, it was good to see your post after the last few,

I do not feel I am forcing my dog to live a life not worth living because she has severely bad hips.  I would reconsider if the dog was not having so much fun.  I do not think a dog in severe pain would go out in the back yard and toss toys in the air to catch them or make sure the squirrels were clear of the yard, were they in such pain.  We should all realize that dogs mask pain quite well and be in tune enough with our dogs to know when the time of joy for them passed.

The time with us may be shorter than it should be but I don't think a life needs to be ended based solely on a set of x-rays

The slideshow seemed more like someone bitter their show dog had one bad hip than anything else.  I am not sure of the point of the presentation.

Nancy, I have not watched the slide show mostly because my poor ancient computer can not handle it. Up until this thread I never commented on Jantie's situation ( please see my comment above and my wish for her) but I have read many of her previous posts. I believe bitter is a very correct word and unfortunately combined with a fanatacism.

There is a previous post you may wish to read http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/bulletins_read/142445.html#144228   and scroll to the posts by Silbersee. I hope Chris will not mind put here is a paragraph she posted which it appears to be a very good summary of the situation -

" No, I do not believe that you are a liar. I think that you are a person with a hurt ego and a perfectionist with a very high IQ. You had envisioned your perfect dog for a long time. You read and investigate a lot and after a long time of research, you went out and bought that seemingly perfect puppy. You even took an expert with you to assist you in your pick. According to your calculations, there should have not been anything in the way of that great future star who would have excelled in the ring and on the field. Never mind all these idiots that spent thousands of Dollars or Euros on older dogs to achieve that goal, when you had the perfect solution and would show them all. What a cruel blow you must have been dealt when mother nature played that terrible "joke" on you. Since you can't go after her, the breeder had to play the scapegoat. This man has done so much for our breed single handedly with his dogs, that I view your accusations as a joke. It must really drive you crazy that he never even bothered to answer you! Jantie, please let it go!"

The unfortunate part of the bitterness is it can not see that OTHER dogs w/ HD may have the possibility of a good life because each animal and it's disease is different.  It appears to me because of revenge and anger and possibly jealousy that others may have what she did not get (a good life w/ their dog despite HD) that she wants everyone to suffer and if that means advocating putting a dog down w/o knowing the dog that's ok to.

Jantie, I stand by my comments to you earlier. If you note I did say that the toughest cases I had seen over the years were the ones where only one hip was involved perhaps because of the imbalance created. By all means contribute to the discussion on CHD but do it in a positive way. Fund research, there are open genetic databases - help fund and promote them. Help us find new ways of understanding the disease and its genetic pathway since we do not yet really have the answer. Help us find out why one dog suffers horribly but others don't - that would be av ery important factor to understand in limiting its impact on our breed.  I still mourn with you the loss of your dog and your hopes as each of God's creatures is very special in their own right and in each or our lives .I pray that God will grant  you the peace to find a way to work positively not negatively.  I still hope that someday  you will have the perspective to see that the best way to honor Indiana and the love he brought to your life is to risk loving another.

_{TIG, Thanks for the clarification.  I was not aware of the old discussion and tought the link was an external link and not done by the poster Jamie.    I am sorry for the pain as I know it well, but I also knew going into it that despite all best plans "Puppies are a crapshoot"  I thought the Europeans understood that more than we Americans.}

_{but FWIW, my dyspalstic dog is of West German Working Lines.  My other dysplastic dog was of American Show LInes back in the 80s., My current Czech Working line male and my Czech/showlines "franekndog" are free of dysplasia, though "frankendog" would only have fair hips.  The pure Czech dog is OFA good and has a good back and no known genetic problems.  He  was obtained as a young adult as and I have  no less bonding with him than the dogs I have raised as puppies; perhaps part of the resiliance of a working breed used to being passed from one handler to another (example military and police dogs)}   

_{I do understand the pain, but you cannot go into the acquisition of many dog breeds today without the realization the HD is a problem.  It is not just a GSD problem - perhaps it is the problem with the increeding necessary to make a "breed" true for many generations - we see more and more problems over time.}  

You make it sound like if I were a psychiatric patient in need of therapy. Let me say I’m well balanced and living in pretty good harmony; far beyond hurt egos and such.

You also make it sound like if I were the ONLY person in the world with a dysplastic GSD. Let me tell you this. Thousands of people today are in the same situation as I was. Nobody listens to them. The breeder couldn’t care less, he/she is already planning future litters, the breeding clubs have no interest whatsoever, all the VIP’s care about is influence and money making. People are left alone with their misery or one ridicules them.

Again, it’s NOT enough to mate A with B, both documenting good hips. That’s amateurism! One must look at the whole family, which obviously no one does. Check my last study about that (Kontraste in The Clash), you will see nobody pays attention to the littermates, one just breeds and breeds. Pathetic really! So if so many ‘amateurs’ are pretending to be trustworthy breeders doing a great job, tell me why you’re not capable of reducing the magnitude of HD?

The only reason that the breeding clubs don’t impose more stringent breeding regulations is that they are the BIG breeders themselves, in desperate need of throwing as many pups on the market as they possibly can. Little do they care about the anonymous laymen buying a dysplastic dog.

So we will continue to see more crippled dogs and more posts here on Pedigreedatabase: “Oh, please help! My friend’s dog is terribly dysplastic! What should he do?”

Please! DO forget about me. This is NOT about me. It’s about the disease which you obviously don’t seem to manage: Canine Hip Dysplasia. It’s been around for quite a while you know, especially the last 25/30 years you, BIG BREEDERS (I’m not talking about the small hobby breeder throwing a litter every two years), have done a terrible job. In fact you’ve done a lousy job, a sl

a lousy job, a sloppy job. No need to be proud of your work. A pity we can’t offer statistics off all these dysplastic dogs in the shelters.

I’m sure you noticed the numerous testimonies of so many gsd-people here that have lived the same ordeal (some over and over again)? Proving I’m NOT alone. So in your next post, please focus on the subject HD, not on my personality. I AM NOT responsible for HD, and those responsible don’t give a damn. Soon enough you will find advertisements on this very website for wheelchairs for dogs. Maybe even marketing: “Get your GSD-pup and get a dogs-on-wheels for free!” With less than half of the population having sound hips, a lot will need them.

So sorry Michael Moore is not a gsd-fan. He would be able to carry out this message better.

Perhaps this thread should continue as one about the quality of life of dogs with bad hips and another started on the issues with breeding practices instead of sidetracking it.

My bitch had severe HD from a year old.  She had a pectineal Mylectomy & that really helped, it's more minor than hip replacement but has to be done by 18mths.  She didn't need medication till 6 yrs than went on Cosyquin & Rimadyl.  I kept her excercise sensible, gradually building up from just 6 metres after the op twice daily, then to four times daily.  When ok with this I extended it by about 6 metres daily, I also did the physio I was showed.  This gradual buid up allowed me to know her limits.  If she limped one day I would rest her then when she walked ok round the house would start her again at the level she'd been ok at previously.  At six months I let her off the lead, but no ball chasing or running mad with others dogs.  She was getting four walks daily.  Aged four she went on to two half hour off lead walks daily, with just one much longer walk at weekends.  She lived to be 13yrs & it was not her legs that took her in the end.  She was the most fantastic dog I will ever know & had an amazing star studded life.  She greeted each day with such excitedment & exuberance & lived her life to the full.  Yet when the vet gave her diagnosis I was told she should be PTS & would have no quality of life.  I just took it one day at a time.  HD is not a death sentence, there are lots of really effective treatment options.  Also remember dogslive for the day, they don't worry about tomorrow or how much an illness may affect them.  Find games to play that don't imvolve stressing the limbs, keep the wieght down, give sensible excercise, good medication & dietary supplements.  I was not able to enter competitions with Lily as I had planned, but she gave me the more enjoyment of living with a dog than any other pet before or since 7 we had the most magical walks ever.  Good Luck!!

Jantie has conveniently neglected to tell those who don't know that when we were first told of Indiana's hip status there was never any mention of a dog in any sort of discomfort. He was at that time only a dog whose hips were not eligilbe for an "a" stamp, might have been for an NZ, not sure if he ever submitted them to the SV. Indiana's xray was published here, he looked mildly effected in one hip, there were some signs of a possible injury to that side of his hip, the other looked normal. This was the opinion expressed here by most who had experience in reading hip xrays. Jantie asked for and received much the same advice as Prodogz - don't run he dog 3 miles every day, give him a good joint supplement, keep his weight down., if he seems to be in pain, give him aspirin. 

However, Jantie chose to run this run 3 miles a day per his own admission, even though he himself admitted that the only time Indy seemed to mind his one bad hip was after that 3 mile run. He refused to rest him, as far as I know the dog was never given any join supplements or pain meds if and when needed. In other words, it seemed that Jantie did everything possible to aggrevate Indiana's condition in order to justify putting  him down.  The goal was to discredit the breeder and Jantie made sure that the rest here knew that Indy had a severely dyspalstic brother that was  put down. BTW, this dog wasn't even living with him, he was at his father's house.

This turned into the PDB melodrama of the year. We were taunted with photos of this beautiful dog, some with Jantie's daughter, with the statements of how much they loved this dog, how much pain he was in, how they dreaded the day when he would have to be put down. When we asked if he tried any of the things that were suggested to him here, he refused to respond. Next came the inevitable - he was having Indy put down because he just couldn't bear to see this dog suffer any longer. Again, did you stop running him, are you giving him supplements, aspirin? This only response was a blow-by-blow description of Indy's death including how he himself pushed the plunger containing the barbituate that killed his dog.

Many of us here tried to convince him to give this dog a change, but it fell on deaf ears. He was going to show up this breeder for what he is come hell or high water. A few here even offered to pay for the dog to be shipped here to the US (from Belgium) and they would give him a forever home and even pay for surgery if needed. Jantie refused - it was his dog and he was going to do what he wanted with him. Some here were so involved with this dog that they sobbed and were heartbroken when Jantie told us he was put down.

I'm stopping here although there is a lot more including Jantie's lawsuit in Germany against this breeder that resulted in his being issued a gag order in Germany. I don't know how many of the posts remain here, some were just to horrific to look at including the one of Indy's postmortem where a disected version of his hip was pictured.

LilyDexter,

I was fortunate in meeting an orthopedic vet and a physical therapist who both convinced me that my dog would live in the day and to let her enjoy her life.  The orthopedic vet said he has seen very few dogs who needed to be PTS due to hips and recommended hip replacement as a last resort.  He had far more concerns about back problems which is what finally took my older one . . .  he was dysplastic for sure but it was the spondylosis that cause pain and debility.

The take home lesson for me is that if I wind up with another puppy, I will monitor the hips while young so that (1) I do not waste time training an unsuitable dog for work and (2) That the less expenseive and less painful options that can be taken with a puppy rather than an adult dog can be taken.