Maggie's Knees

Recently, our household has been faced with a bit of a medical challenge... and her name is Maggie. Maggie is a 3 year old boxer/lab mix. If I wanted to blog strictly about her, I know she'd give me a never-ending supply of material. I adopted Maggie from a rescue in Columbus called Pets Without Parents. The decision to bring her home was one of those "I can help this dog" feelings. She has come a long way since I first brought her home-- still not a fan of wood floors or passing through narrow spaces (or the furniture being re-arranged) but she's got lots of love, which makes up for all of her shortcomings. Seeing her behavior sometimes makes me wonder if dogs, too, can have autism... if it were able to be diagnosed, I'm certain she'd have it.

Starting about a month or so ago, we happened to notice that she was having difficulties standing up. Looked as though her back legs had fallen asleep and she was walking on pins and needles. At first, I had thought nothing of it-- for the first day or so, we figured she pinched a nerve or was playing too hard with one of the other dogs-- figured it would "work itself out," if you will.

About a week in, I contacted our veterinarian and began the "what should we do?" discussion and x-rays were taken. Mags has luxating patellas. Best case scenario- it will 'correct itself' over a short period of time. Worst case scenario- surgery. She was put on pain meds and we were told to keep her on cage rest and monitor the situation.

Easier said than done.

Flashback to when I first adopted Maggie-- I tried to crate her. The first day, she destroyed the crate liner and everything inside of the crate in an attempt to get out (and left a bloody mess from trying to dig through the metal bars of the crate). Quite impressive given that she was only in there for an hour and a half, tops. Figured that we would a) need a lot more work to get her comfortable with being in the crate or b) try some other method of confining her. We upgraded. I figured she would be okay hanging out closed off in my bedroom while I was away. Seems more harmless than a crate... she typically lays on the bed anyways, so what difference does it make if the door was closed, right? Wrong. I came home to torn up carpeting by the bedroom door and gouges in my sub-floor. Since that day, confining this dog has been avoided. So when the vet suggested cage rest, my heart sank.

It's been a week and a half since we have been given the pain meds and she's been on quasi-cage rest (in a one-story house, it's easy to make sure she doesn't jump on anything-- and if Maggie and the puppy decide to start in with playing, Maggie ends up in her crate-- supervised, of course). We have made a bit of improvement, but I'm not sure we're out of the woods yet.