Hello PT. I wanted to post an update on Kirkie.

On January 12th I took Kirk into the vet because I had noticed he was showing signs of increased pain. That week he had started lifting his left foot off the ground for short periods, something which I had never seen him do before that-- prior to that he was weight-bearing on his left leg, but obviously still favoring it while walking. (FYI --He had the TPO on his right side, and the left had not been operated on at all.)

At that point I did not have him on pain meds and was relying on supplementation with Hyaflex daily and Adequan injections weekly. Both of these are chondroprotective agents and the Adequan especially was providing obvious relief. However, that week I took him in I did not notice any marked improvement in the beginning of the week after his Adequan shot.

Anyway, we performed x-rays because we knew that dislocation of the hip was a real possibility. X-rays clearly showed that his left hip was completely popped out of the socket (the femoral head popped completely out of the acetabulum). This is incredibly painful and it is a testament to the absolute stoicism of dogs that he was continuing to weight bear on the leg. Crazy boy!! Anyway, this has always been something we knew was likely to happen to him after seeing his initial x-rays, but we certainly hoped that he would be older before this happened.

At this point we called the board-certified surgeon (who performed his TPO) and asked him how to proceed. His first recommendation was to wait until he was a year old (2-3 months) before operating and in the mean time keep him on high doses of pain meds and work on building up his hindquarter musculature. Then later, after sending the surgeon the x-rays, he informed us that the hip had been dislocated longer than a week. Hearing that made me feel like the most terrible Mommy ever. I swear, dogs are just so stoic!! He also amended his recommendation and felt that we should try to work on building his muscle for just a month before operating, unless he became any more painful and then we could operate sooner.

Well, Kirkie lasted two weeks on the high pain meds routine before things got really bad. Around the middle of last week he started hop on his back leg alone about 80% of the time and slowly all but ceased weight bearing on that left leg. I was afraid he had blown his left knee, or would be in danger of blowing the right knee if he continued the full on bunny hop. I upped his pain meds a bit more, but when I saw no improvement I notified my vet to let her know that I wanted to schedule the surgery.

He had the FHO (femoral head osteotomy) on his left side this Friday and the whole operation went VERY smoothly. I actually watched most of the procedure...which proved a bit difficult at times. I watched through a window outside of the operating room--- I couldn't be *in* the OR.

He came home Saturday night. He has lots of pain meds on board and I'm sedating him to keep him calm. In about 2 weeks he should be back to walking. I cannot wait!

The leg is hardly swollen. The sutures/staples are very neat and not looking red or inflamed in the least. He is much easier to look at than he was after the TPO. He is not whining or crying much at all, which is so much easier on everyone.

Here he is looking pathetic in his cone:



Thank you for reading. Please send us good thoughts for his recovery! I hope after recovery he can run, hike and play like a normal pup. He has been through so much already and he's JUST 10 months old.