So if your dog is just ” not acting right”, maybe it’s time to have a valley fever test done.  The test can pick up the disease sometime after it has been in the body for at least 4 weeks.  The test picks up the antibodies that the body makes against the fungus, so the body has to be strong enough to make the antibodies, and it has to have time to make them, before the test will show a positive result.  Your vet will know how to interpret the tests.

If you are reading this and you have just visited our area with your dog and you are now back home, not in our Sonoran Desert, be certain to mention to your vet that you have been here, because Cocccidiodomycosis will not be high on their differential list of your dog’s  problem, without that information.

Feline with Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tear

Hi, my name is Niki, and I really scared my Mom a few days ago.  I tried to walk to her, but I kept collapsing on one of my legs, and sitting down to catch myself.  She really couldn’t tell what was wrong with me, and I wasn’t making it easy for her.   So off we went to see Dr. Paula to see if she could diagnose my problem. 

When we got to PAWS, I did my thing across the exam room floor, trying to walk, collapsing on one leg, and then sitting like any self-respecting kitty will do to not look like I am not in control.  Well they hoisted me right up onto that table and started touching me from one end of my body to the next.  When Dr. Paula got to my knee she knew — there it was, the problem.  No doubt about it, my knee is only supposed to move in one direction, like a hinge, but it was sliding forward a good quarter of an inch.  That’s why I couldn’t walk right — I’d put my weight on that leg, and instead of it supporting me, it slid forward!  It surprized me and hurt me, so I’d just sit down.  I got to get off that table then and hide back in my cage while Mom and Dr. Paula discussed my options.  That anterior cruciate ligament is deep inside the knee, and it functions to keep the knee stable, to keep the knee just moving in one plane, as a hinge.  The best treatment for a young animal is surgery, to repair the ligament.  However, I am not spring chicken — I have a few years on me, and perhaps a few extra pounds.  You see, I also have pretty significant arthritis in both my hips, so I can’t exercise like I should, to keep the extra weight off, and that makes me a poor candidate for surgery.  But there are other options, Dr. Paula tells us.  We can do acupuncture, herbs, and natural anti-inflammatory meds.   We opted for the herbs and laser acupuncture.  After just one acupuncture treatment and a week of herbs, I am now walking with just a slight limp in that rear leg — I can walk to wherever I want to go, again.  It will continue to get better, unless I slip and fall, or pull it in some way to strain the ligament again.  I will have arthritis in that knee, because of the injury and the instability of the knee, but Dr. Paula says I should be able to walk again, almost normally, in the future.  I guess when it gets cold and damp, my arthritis will really act up, but I can live with that.  I live in sunny and dry Tucson, AZ, how many bad days can there be???

Fearless

So you can see why I am so excited about this new Regenerative Medicine.  Our first case will be a sweet young German Shepherd boy with bilateral elbow dysplasia who is not a candidate for surgery.  His Mom is doing everything she can to help him, including medications, chinese herbs, acupuncture, and physical therapy, including the underwater treadmill and exercises.  However, this stem cell treatment may really decrease his pain and stiffness, and boost his ability to move.  We are really excited to provide this new therapy that may provide help for those dogs who have not been helped adequately with the previous modalities we offer. We will continue to watch for the newest and safest therapies on the horizon for your loving companion animal.  Watch these posts for updates on the dogs we judge to require this new Regenerative Medicine.

My Mom gets me the very best integrative medicine possible.  She takes me to the Veterinary Neurologist for my Western Medicine, and then she drives me over a hundred miles to get my acupuncture, chinese medicinal herbs and medical qigong.  See, she loves me!  She wasn’t content until she felt she had done everything she could to keep my seizures under control.  I get something called “cluster seizures,” which can be really dangerous if I just keep having the seizures one after the other — something about cooking my brain……

So I gotta tell you, I have a good life.  I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for my Mom taking such good care of me.  To sum that up, for seizure disorders, you may need to use the western anticonvulsant medications, and you also want to see an integrative veterinarian to add acupuncture, chinese herbs, supplements, talk about your diet, and maybe even Medical Qigong.  There are a lot of possibilities for treatment, so don’t let your family get overwhelmed if you get a diagnosis of seizure disorder. I’m living proof that sometimes even the hard cases can live a good quality life.

So the reason for my telling you this story is so that if you see a collapse like mine, you will know that it could be serious, and you need to see a vet as soon as possible.   Hopefully this is the end of my tumor story, since we caught it right after the first rupture.  I’ll keep you posted.

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!