SUMMARY: Only a little sore.
Tika was still miserable at bedtime last night. But this morning, she's almost as perky as ever. I tried to pick her up one more time, and she still whined painfully, so it's not all gone.
My regular vet is gone this week, so there's only one vet there and she was booked even including the emergency slots that they reserve, and I decided with much angst that Tika's situation wasn't enough of an emergency to go down there and sit for however many hours it took until she could squeeze us in for a few minutes. (OK, I tried to make the sentence longer but couldn't.)
I've had mail from a friend whose dog has a compressed disk in his neck, with exactly the same symptoms. They have treated with prednisone, which made the symptoms go away, and continue with chiro and acupuncture, but are still in process of trying to figure out how bad it really is and what their options are.
Soooo that could be it for Tika, too. I had her x-rayed after the first couple of times this happened at my regular vet, and he and x-ray expert said she's got a tiny bit of arthritis in the neck that shouldn't generally cause problems but if things get in the wrong position, it could be very painful. I'll have to look up how long ago that was and decide whether I want to drive to a specialist to do xrays again. Sighhhhh-- just dropped $500 and a day off work taking Boost up to the orthopedist north of San Francisco for evaluation. Can't they space it out better?
I've heard from one 3-dog person who suggested that "a pair and a spare" would be a good number of agility dogs to have (thanks, Team Small Dog), and another 3-dog person who ended up with one who physically can't do it, one who just isn't interested, and one who is a fabulous agility dog but is so reactive to other dogs that she's retired him from agility because the stress on both of them, and the risk, is too much.
Someone else said "That's why I have 4 dogs." So then there's my agility instructor who for a while had 4 dogs--one whose leg kept getting broken (not during agility), one who had repeat injuries to --toes? ankles?, one who started having exercise-induced seizures... Jeez, before you know it, I'm going to have to have a kennel full of back-up emergency dogs for when my main canines are out of commission.
Not.
Meanwhile, am trying for an appointment with my regular vet for Monday. Tika'll probably be fine then and we won't be able to tell what was causing the problem. (But I guess I'd rather that than Tika being miserable all weekend.)
Try not to get to overly worried yet. Yes, she may have to take time off but will probably get better. Getting another dog doesnt mean they wont get injuried. I had a rescued sheltie that got injured , not in agility, and no one could figure out what was wrong. He is retired. I now have a young sheltie , that just got injured and is slowly coming back. I know how you feel though. Its hard to be patient. Been there,done that, have the tatoo! LOL Diana
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