For those of you who know me personally or have been following my business page on facebook you already know about the medical issues we have been going through with Pickle over the last month.
Pickle has been walking a little funny and we didn't think anything of it until it started to affect his balance. It wasn't until after we brought Pickle to our local vet at Woodbrook Animal Clinic that we found out he had an Intervertebral Disk Disease (IVDD). I knew when we adopted Pickle that this may be an issue but seeing he was so young I thought we had more time before we had to start worrying about it, I was so very wrong.
For those who don't know what IVDD is, it is a disease that is very common for dachshunds to get. Actually 1 in 4 are most likely to have disk problem at some point in their lives. IVDD is the degeneration of the disk causing compression on the spine and is also the main cause of spinal disease in dogs as well. So basically what happens is that over time the cushion between the disks are pushed out causing them to bulge or even rupture. This caused Pickle to lose the ability to properly use his hind legs, and caused him a lot of pain.
Once we found out what the problem was we needed to find a way to fix it. Pickle is immediately brought to a 24 hour clinic where they ran some tests just to see how bad the disks are so we could go over our options. After some x-rays and a CT scan we found out that he had one very bad ruptured disk and one that wasn't very bad yet but we still needed to keep an eye on it. After
much debate, a lot of tears, and Pickle staying in the clinic for several days we decided to go the less invasive route. Pickle was to come home and be on kennel rest and some meds to see if we could get the swelling to go down.
Bringing Pickle Home was the easy part, what to follow was still unknown...
Pickle has been walking a little funny and we didn't think anything of it until it started to affect his balance. It wasn't until after we brought Pickle to our local vet at Woodbrook Animal Clinic that we found out he had an Intervertebral Disk Disease (IVDD). I knew when we adopted Pickle that this may be an issue but seeing he was so young I thought we had more time before we had to start worrying about it, I was so very wrong.
For those who don't know what IVDD is, it is a disease that is very common for dachshunds to get. Actually 1 in 4 are most likely to have disk problem at some point in their lives. IVDD is the degeneration of the disk causing compression on the spine and is also the main cause of spinal disease in dogs as well. So basically what happens is that over time the cushion between the disks are pushed out causing them to bulge or even rupture. This caused Pickle to lose the ability to properly use his hind legs, and caused him a lot of pain.
Once we found out what the problem was we needed to find a way to fix it. Pickle is immediately brought to a 24 hour clinic where they ran some tests just to see how bad the disks are so we could go over our options. After some x-rays and a CT scan we found out that he had one very bad ruptured disk and one that wasn't very bad yet but we still needed to keep an eye on it. After
much debate, a lot of tears, and Pickle staying in the clinic for several days we decided to go the less invasive route. Pickle was to come home and be on kennel rest and some meds to see if we could get the swelling to go down.
Bringing Pickle Home was the easy part, what to follow was still unknown...