Slipping knees turned to arthritis..

Hi, gosh it's been so very long since I posted on here! I hope you are all doing well. I am here to ask for advice on my little girl Rosie, she was the runt of the litter bless her and has always been a little fighter and is now coming upto six. Since a pup she has had slipping knees. She used to cry when they slipped out ;( though for the past few years had hopped and I sometimes have to gently put it back in, tho it seems to have got a lot better until the past few weeks, she has started to limp after she has been sitting for a bit and her knees seem to be in.

You maybe wondering why I've never had her operated on or Anything truth is the vet said there was no need to and that she will be ok
I was wondering can anyone recommend any herbal medications that could help? Or anyone else had this?

She goes for a walk everyday tho she seems ok and pain free whilst running in the park..is it best to cut down or keep her exercising? Sorry if spellings bad am on iPod take Care xx

She needs to see the vet asap to determine what is going on as it could be her joints or something else -- impossible to diagnose on a board -- but this will probably only get worse and worse potentially making her final years agonising. What terrible advice from the vet -- has anyone seen her in the intervening years and checked her knees? Most vets routinely pull out a dog's leg's to check joint flexibility when they get their annual exam (as they all need). If they were regularly popping out and if they caused her to cry out then how could a vet not have noticed over the next few years? I really think she should have had surgery.

It is potentially excruciating for them to be left like this -- as you can imagine if your own leg bone had been popping completely out of a knee joint. Please get her to a vet -- or better yet, she really needs an orthopedic surgeon and I certainly would not bring her to the original vet who made that recommendation. Her knees may well have becme so bad they just fused due to the high grade luxation -- this was the case with a severely luxating rescue I took n at age 6 and by then there was nothing that could be done but to give her pain meds daily. Please do not get herbal medicines rather than proper diagnosis, medical care and pain relief if she needs it.

I had researched luxating patella years ago when my India's right knee cap was found to be luxating at a very young age.

Things have changed so much over the years, so you really do have to read the veterinary sites and stay caught up with developments, especially when it is a health issue affecting your own dog.

When vets started surgically correcting luxating patellas, they would often only repair bigger dogs' knees, but not the small and toy dogs. I don't know why this was so. Fortunately these days the little dogs get surgery to fix their luxating patellas, and vets are more willing to put the ridge back in a bone worn smooth in the little dogs like they do for larger dogs.

It has been stated on this website many times that luxating patella leads to early arthritis, and once arthritis starts damaging the knee the surgeon is less likely to want to do surgery.

It's really important to get this fixed when the dog is young, before the knee is too damaged.

What I would do in your case is get her to an orthopedic surgeon as soon as possible to find out if her knees can be fixed.

Cathy Moon said:

It has been stated on this website many times that luxating patella leads to early arthritis, and once arthritis starts damaging the knee the surgeon is less likely to want to do surgery.

It's really important to get this fixed when the dog is young, before the knee is too damaged.

What I would do in your case is get her to an orthopedic surgeon as soon as possible to find out if her knees can be fixed.

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Definitely get her to an orthopedic surgeon. Her knee probably needed surgery years ago. This is exactly why I had Shelby's knee done when she was a year old. It began popping out at 6 months old. We waited another 6 months to see if it would tighten up. It did not. Her knee wasn't horrible then but we knew it would only get worse and the thought of not doing the surgery and having her deal with arthritis unnecessarily at a young age just wasn't worth it.