Medial Patellar Luxation

Hi, we’re Amanda and Oliver.  We wanted to tell you our story about our knees.  Dr. Paula says the name for our problem is Medial Patellar Luxation.  What that means to us is that our kneecaps don’t stay in place in front of our knees the way they are supposed to.  We’ve always known that we just couldn’t jump like our brothers and sisters could, and they made fun of us that sometimes when we run we have to skip to get our knees to work right, but we didn’t know what was different about us.  Dr. Paula says that this Medial Patellar Luxation, or MPL for short, is really common in the smaller breeds like us.  It can be inherited from our parents, so it is always something that the vet checks when we are puppies.  Sometimes it shows up early, sometimes it doesn’t show up until we are older.   The severity of the problem is graded from a 1 to a 5, depending upon whether the kneecap stays in place most of the time or stays dislocated most of the time.  If it is really bad, a Grade 5, you usually have to have surgery to correct it, and Dr. Paula says that is best done by a board-certified veterinary surgeon.  If it is not so bad, maybe a Grade 1 to 3, sometimes there are less invasive procedures that can help.  That’s where we come in.  Our knees are only a Grade 2 to 3, not too bad right now, so Dr. Paula is treating us with some natural anti-inflammatory medicine, and acupuncture.  We expected to have to let Dr. Paula know how we felt about so many needles stuck in us every week, but you know what?  She is using a laser instead of needles, and it doesn’t hurt at all.  A few spots are really sore, so it gets a little warm when she treats those areas, but we flinch a little and let her know, and she moves on to another spot for a few minutes.  She always comes back to those spots to finish the treatment, but by then it doesn’t hurt anymore.  I’m feeling a little Chinese already — is my beard looking different?   Oh yeah, the other thing is, we are on a diet…….she says we need to be thin in order to put less strain on our knees …… not liking it, but I guess it’s better than surgery.  OK, well, it’s time for dinner, gotta go, just wanted to let you all know a little about MPL, since it is such an important problem in  us little guys and gals.  

Amanda, that’s My bowl, move over…..you’re hogging the food…move over!