Another injury, thank goodness for insurance!

Last year, Bubs started limping on his rear back leg. We took him to the vet and were told to stop letting him jump on and off of the couch and let him rest. After a couple of months he went back to normal.

In late November, we noticed he's been hesitant to jump off the bed and couch. We just thought that it was the cold weather making his leg hurt again. We began carrying him to get on and off the bed and couch. I took him on a visit to see Bay's new home, and Bubs had trouble going up and down the wooden staircase. 3 - 4 weeks later, he got progressively worse. We thought he may have hurt his back by jumping wrong.

Waiting to be examined

The pain was so bad that he would freeze up or whelp when we picked him up / put him down. We decided to take him to the emergency vet, they did some exams on him confirmed that he tore his ACL in his leg last year. They also centralized his injury to be in his neck. The vet recommended an MRI to really see what's going on. We did the MRI and it confirmed that there are some discs that are near bulging and are pressing up on his spinal cord.

Stoned after the MRI

In lieu of surgery, we have him doing rehabilitation. His rehabilitation doctor taught us some daily stretches, prescribed an inflammatory medicine and recommended that he not jump on and off the couch or walk on stairs for the rest of his life, and currently he is limited to 5-10 min short walks wearing a harness.

So far he is doing well, but we've had to change our lifestyle. We are happy that he's doing better and hope that he won't have to go through surgery.

Dog parents, listen to your pets! If they're acting different, that's their way of telling you something is wrong, and if you don't have insurance, GET IT! Dog MRI's, Emergency room visits, can add up very fast.

On top of the medical bills, we had to purchase more stuff for Bubs. We had a Petmate 24" Compass Kennel and realized it was too small for him. We upgraded him to a 28" so that he could fit more comfortably inside of the kennel.

We have several collars for Cooper, and only 1 Hamilton harness. We invested in 2 more so that we could wash them between wears. The vet recommended Blueberry Harnesses and we also bought another Hamilton.

Blueberry Green Harness

Hamilton Raspberry Harness
[going to be exchanged for a different color]

Since we're limiting him from walking on stairs, we also purchased a new gate. We did our research and decided to purchase the Stork Craft Easy Walk-Thru Tall Metal Safety Gate because it doesn't have a metal bar to walk over when it's not engaged.