Pet Sense (Archives)
All Creatures Animal Hospital
1894 Ohio Pike 797-(PETS)
Buster’s story
About a month ago Brian and “Buster” Jones visited All Creatures seeking help for Buster’s increasing pain and poor quality of life. Buster is eight years old and has had knee trouble since the age of 5, with increasing stiffness and pain and reluctance to move. One thing I have learned treating animals is owners hate to see their pets suffer, often even more than they tolerate pain themselves. Brian and Buster are definitely not the first client to seek out All Creatures because their aging canine was experiencing increasing pain. Buster’s arthritis is in both of his knees and crippling him. What the Jones were giving him for pain was not helping anymore. So often we have owners stop pain medications because they feel they are not helping. Frequently this is true but we have found that by tweaking their pet’s medications or adding another medication, we can see significant improvement in a pet’s arthritis pain. At All Creatures Animal Hospital, multimodal arthritis therapy is the approach we use to handle a patients arthritis pain. From spending time studying at the “The Animal Pain Clinic” in Colorado with Dr Dan’s mentor and former vet school roommate, All Creatures has adopted many of Dr. Gaynor’s recommendations for pain prevention and treatment. These pain free treatment protocols are not only for arthritis, but also for amputations, declaws, orthopedic surgeries and other chronic conditions. For debilitating chronic arthritis, All Creatures uses combination therapy (Multimodal) combining the use of: laser therapy, injectable nutraceuticals, drug therapy (various narcotics and other pain medications), Various Nutraceuticals such as Phycox or Dasaquin (a blend of fish oil, chondroitins, MSM, and other nutraceuticals), diet changes, weight reductions, physical therapy and massage therapy. Buster was recently in for his recheck and Brian claims he is new dog and enjoying his life again.
Amputations, often the
best choice
Pets get cancer –actually commonly. They get malignant and benign neoplasms (tumors) quite frequently. Some breeds get them more often than others and some tumors have breed tendencies. Diagnosis can be a challenge as our patients don’t always tell us what’s hurting. For example, at the age of 13 “Sadie” Earhart started limping on her left front leg. After a biopsy we discovered she had a nerve sheath tumor that was likely to spread. One operation bought her 3-4 months but then she began limping again and acting painful. The next option for Sadie was an amputation. Since God gave all dogs three legs and a spare, the Earhart’s decided to proceed with allowing All Creatures to do the procedure. 30 days post op “Sadie” has not missed a step and margins to the nerves and lymph are cancer free. Now if you would take 10 pet owners, I would say 50% of owners would feel that removing a limb would not seem “fair” or “cruel” to do to their loved pet. I can usually determine the quality of life issues and when we recommend a second chance by amputation, and most owners can’t thank us enough after seeing the results.
Take another patient of All Creatures, “Hershey” Gribble. Hershey was hit by a car and dragged under a vehicle before getting away with a badly damaged open fracture in one hind limb and also a open dislocated ankle in the other limb. After it was clear we could not save one hind limb, we had to use a screw, a stabilization wire, and splint the other leg for 4 weeks for Hershey to keep his other back leg. While splinted, Hershey actually began walking on 2 legs and did quite well on his front two legs. Now it’s been 2 months and Hershey is managing with his three legs very well during his recent recheck.
