Hi all!! As you know, we were lucky to adopt skeety last year and have been sooo in love with him since. When we first got skeety we knew something was not right right away about his "gait" and brought him to our local vet for a check up.
He had worms, took care of that and had several blood tests and x-rays done . He was much younger than what we first were told/thought. Our vet , with a huge sigh of releif , says skeetys hips and such looked good , but because he was so young, had lots of soft tissue and needed more time to finish growing that he thought we should wait out his troubles a bit as nothing stood out the obvious with his movement troubles. We decided to keep his exercise mild and just let hime grow and it seemed he was getting a little better.
Today I brought him for his shots that were due and also a physical check up. We found that he has a knee cap that keeps sliding in and out and it may be a deformity from birth or from an accident somewhere in time, so we are planning surgery to have that fixed. My vet also is suspicious of a possible spinal problem that could be causing many of skeety's problems but was very difficult to diagnose at such a young age as he was not anywhere near done developing. This also could be birth defect or from a previous accident.
The knee cap surgery i will gladly make many sacrafices to have done if it means he will be with me for many more years ahead even if he will not beable to go with me on my adventures like i had hoped before adopting him. If he has a spinal problem, my vet says that the best thing would be to consider having him put to sleep as with such largely expensive, no guaruntee surgery, his troubles would most likely just get worse and treatment is no guaruntee and expensive.
My heart is just breaking. When i first met "mikey" skeeter i fell in love with him. I'm not sure what happened in his past, he came to us with missing hair on one side of his head, an eye infection,worms, and soreness that made him walk funny, but i still felt he needed to be our family member and i would do all that i could to give him a great life. Now at only just around a year and half old his life may be done and i just feel crushed. I had originally wanted to adopt him as a running/skiing partner and after meeting him, new it wasn't going to be that way for awhile. I brought him on short ones and he LOVED it but paid the price at home with more aches and pains.
I am praying for good news today from the vet after he looks over yet a couple more x-rays. Even if it means skeety will just be a couch potatoe to snuggle with at the end of the day because he won't beable to be super physical i can handle that, but the thought of saying goodbye just kills me.please pray for skeety-he is just such a wonderful boy. Thank you for letting me vent, shanna