04/12/2025
What a day yesterday was!
We received a referral to a specialist vets in Melrose who deal with dog rehabilitation and pain management.
Max had to walk on a power plate to assess how he weight bears through each leg, he then had x-rays and ultrasound scans of all the joints that our vets were aware were causing him problems.
But on a physical examination the specialist thought it best to examine his hips and spine too. And there begins our problem.
Max has a very rare extra vertebra (and one extra rib!! Only mad max) but this means that his spine is longer than it should be and it's putting abnormal pressure on his tail bone and hips. This has caused severe hip dysplasia and arthritis is growing at a quite fast past around this extra piece of bone.
He also has tendonitis in his wrist, both elbows, both shoulders and up his neck because he is trying to put all his weight through the front half of his body to compensate for this problem at the back.
The long term aspect is that if we do nothing he could end up with neurological issues or become paralyzed as his nerves and spinal cord become compressed by the arthritis.
The deformity is something some dogs are born with but it's quite a rare thing to see.
Our beautiful brave boy has a long journey ahead of him.
The proposed treatment is to harvest some of his stem cells, a lab will grow them, then along with a sample of his own blood this will be injected into all his sore spots and also the spine. This will work as a barrier, surround the arthritis and prevent more growing. If this is successful he will have a longer life span and hopefully be able to do all the mad Max things that he loves most.
Not what we expected to hear at all but we will do whatever we can for our boy. Always have things checked out, no matter how small or insignificant you think they might be ๐พ