Cant Keep Quiet!

She may not always act like it, but my dog is getting old. She’s getting more and more gray in her muzzle and elsewhere on her body.

Artie is about 8 years old. She’s probably closer to 9 but I’m not exactly sure of her age. I took her to the vet today because I was worried that she had some sort of lump on her back, right hip.

I really wasn’t sure she had a lump on her hip. She has a patch where the fur has been rubbed off her leg right where I thought she might have a lump. I wasn’t sure if I was really seeing a lump or if it was just an illusion caused by the bald patch making the rest of the fur look bigger. When I felt both hips at once I could tell that there was something there but I still wasn’t sure if it wasn’t just the calloused skin right at the patch.

What made me decide to go ahead and take her was the fact that she’s stumbled a couple of times which is unusual for her. Yesterday she fell. Hard.

Let me first say that we have hard wood floors. Artie runs through the house and has always slid on the floors when she turned corners. She’s fallen on occasion but usually she was going full out and had slid past the wall when she fell. I swear she uses the walls as bumper shoots. She’s always gotten up and gone on as if nothing happened.

Yesterday when Artie fell she was again turning a corner. She wasn’t running, though. It also wasn’t a sharp turn. From where I was standing it looked like her back right leg had somehow caused the fall. I couldn’t tell if it gave out or just didn’t get to where she wanted it as quickly as she was hoping.

Artie was a bit slower than usual getting up but otherwise seemed just fine.

It turns out that Artie doesn’t have a growth on her hip. The patch of skin has thickened and roughened enough that it was what I was feeling. The visual “lump” was an optical illusion.

That doesn’t mean Artie was all peaches and cream. The vet palpated her legs and hips and forced them to move while she laid on her side. When he checked the right leg she definitely reacted to the vet’s actions.

The vet thinks she might be getting arthritis in her hips. He won’t be able to tell how bad it is until he can take an x-ray. The vet said that he’s seen dogs that have such bad arthritis your amazed they can walk and others that had very little arthritis but acted like they were crippled. Considering that Artie ran around the house on a hairline fracture in one of her paws when she was about a year old, I’d say she’d be in that first group. If, that is, she does indeed have arthritis.

Next Tuesday he’ll take an x-ray of her hips since she’ll already be under to get her ear fixed.

Oh, didn’t I mention her ear? Sorry. I didn’t notice that she had a problem with her left ear until she was at the vet’s. The vet didn’t notice it at first, either. Then again, he was looking at the other end.

Artie’s left ear has a large hematoma between the skin. Because her ears naturally fold over and hang a bit back and down, it’s not very noticeable. Even when she was up on the table and I was in front of her face I didn’t see it. It wasn’t until I pet her head and then moved my hand to her ear to rub it that I felt the hematoma.

The vet doesn’t think it’s too old because it’s still very soft. We’re waiting until next week to see if the steroid shot the vet gave Artie for her skin helps clear up the hematoma. According to the vet it is a possibility but only a slight one.