Advice on what I should do about my 1 year old dog

[Lolaandnova]

Hi everyone,

First time posting, so I apologise if I've posted in the wrong place or anything!

We bought a female golden retriever (Lola), from a girl who didnt want her anymore (she said she was moving - I don't think that was true). Lola was 10 weeks old when we got her and she is now only 12 months old.

Eventually, after a few months we took her to the vet because she was limping and we found out she has double hip dysplasia in both back legs. We were willing to pay £16,000 and our insurance was only £1000 a year since we didnt expect a dog to get so sick that quickly.

We took her to Noel Fitzpatrick (supervet) for both her double hip replacement surgery, but while we were there he also diagnosed her with double elbow dysplasia in both front legs, and this would required a further £5000 one elbow and £500 for another. Later on, the better elbow would require the £5000 surgery.

In total she will have to have 4 surgeries and about 8 months of recovery in a cage. Noel Fitzpatrick said it would improve her current quality of life but she still has osteoarthirtis (arthritis)

It would cost us over £25,000 to £30,000, 8 months of surgery and recovery and possibly more later, and constant arthiritis management. He did say he has no idea how quickly her arthiritis will spread and how long she has before it cripples her. The operations would just delay everything or possibly delay.

We have no idea what to do and are considering euthanasia as we cant see her wanting that many operations and even with the ops, her quality of life would most likely drop. She has a brother (not same litter) who plays quite rough, which would need to stop, and I imagine no big walks either.

We have no idea what the right decision is and are really struggling.

Also, after telling the girl we purchased from, and asking for breeders address to report, she has blocked us and stopped replying. She did give the breeders number ages ago and he never replied, and now is saying he never sold puppies and won't answer calls.

Does anyone know who we can report him and her to? And please give advice on what to do with our poor baby girl?

Should we pay for the operations in hopes that she improves and possibly gets to live a longer life? Or should we euthanise and not put her through the 8 months of ops and recovery and then arthiritis? Would you do it if money wasn't an issue?

Thank you for reading this and sorry for the long read :(

If it were my beloved dog, OP, even if I had all that money, I would still opt for euthenasia. Eight months recovery in a cage followed by the pain of arthritis....

I'm so sorry

I would take some time to weigh up and assess.
I would neither rush directly to euthanasia nor surgery, and would definitely be asking lots of questions, as you are, and doing a lot of my own research.

I'm so sorry.

Personally I would have to consider putting to sleep.

My cocker had surgery on one back leg and it was not long before her other back leg went. She was in so much pain and there was no way to make her understand that she wasn't able to bounce about.

We have a dog with hip dysplasia and arthritis. Surgery didn't help, just caused her pain and recovery was difficult.

What has helped the most is

Supplements
Injections
Pain relief when needed
A hot water bottle on joints or a heating pad
Therapy
Diet - turmeric paste is very successful and does wonders.

(She goes for water therapy which is like walking in a big box of water.)

I think I would pts.
What a horrible situation for you, but I think it’s the kindest thing in this case.
There’s practically no chance of a good outcome. So sorry.

It was a Fragmented coronoid process he had... the arthroscopy was for that.

It didn’t go wrong as such, it went fine, they were happy with it, he recovered fine - it just didn’t give him as much improvement as they had wanted.

The crate rest btw, he coped fine with, it was me that struggled, lol, we did loads of training and enrichment stuff and so he was ok, it just took a lot of my time and was quite intense.

The NSAIDs, well by that point he’d also had some behavioural issues and had been diagnosed with spinal pain and was on other medication so they masked that the NSAIDs weren’t agreeing with him and he got a perforated ulcer, very nearly died and had a huge emergency operation.

It didn’t even occur to me to have him PTS for the elbow tbh, he was 16 weeks old when he first went lame and about 24 weeks for the arthroscopy - he was a puppy, it all seemed like he’d have an almost normal life after for just a few weeks of hassle (for him). I don’t know whether I’d do the same again or not to be dead honest, I don’t mean I definitely wouldn’t, just I genuinely don’t know. The time after it while he was on NSAIDs he was pretty good, not quite as he should be, but good.

The ulcer... well, it was an emergency - they gave him less than 50% odds of pulling through, with hindsight that’s where I would have had him PTS, but at the time I didn’t realise it was the NSAIDs, they told me that after they’d opened him up, or that he’d not be able to have them again and what the implications of that were.

Over the next few years he had a few episodes, usually over winter where he’d be noticeably in pain even with little to no exercise and we’d readjust his painkillers, he had some stuff like laser therapy done... at 6, he had what seemed like one of those, only upping his meds and adding in different ones just made no difference - after about 5 or 6 weeks he was worse in fact and he started stopping playing, following me about, all that sort of stuff... and I just knew he was done. He’d never stopped doing stuff before, it had always been me stopping him.

As a dc our rotty had hip displasia.. Surgery and pain killers for the rest of her life. Tbh it was no life. And I made a vow I would never have a ddog on meds... As an adult my rotty got cancer... 1 operation and full recovery within weeks . She got a brain tumour and sadly had her pts. No way would I have put a dpuppy through what you describe op.. Sounds horrific and cruel.

I would put her to sleep and I am a bit horrified that the vets aren't steering you in that direction.

She has a life of pain in front of her, and the stress of living with a healthy litter mate who will invertingly cause her pain and injuries unless they are strictly kept apart.

I get the vets make money from this, but it's cruel in my opinion.

Can I say dogs can mask pain incredibly well, I've seen dogs with a smile on their faces, tails wagging and still wanting to play enough when they have horrific injuries that must be enormously painful.

It's a defence mechanism and part of their DNA, just like a dog happily chase a thrown ball all day in the heat then die of heat exhaustion.

We have to make the difficult decisions for them sometimes.

Please please please listen to the advice you have been given here.

i repeat, just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should.

Referral centres (which are fantastic before anyone says im slating) operate on the assumption that you may well have already made the decision to try everything. They are condition focused, as they have to be to achieve results, but my worry as a vet nurse is thet they lose sight of the whole animal. Yes they can fix the hips/elbows but this still leaves your dog needing medical management of pain. Long term use of NSAIDS is not without issues in itself.

Maybe consider a second opinion

Agree with other posters. The kind, loving and decent to do is to put to sleep when her quality of life is impacted. Endless months of pain, surgery and being confined to a cage is torture for a dog and I can’t believe anyone would advocate it. The dog won’t understand what’s happening to it. I can’t watch supervet as I’m disgusted by what he does to animals and how he manipulates the owners to line his own pockets. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be. Keeping animals alive whilst in pain and suffering is selfish of the owners.

I would say you fell for a typical puppy farm scam unfortunately but that is irrelevant to the current situation . I’d get a second opinion from another orthopaedic vet and take it from there but then I wouldn’t have gone to the vet you’ve chosen in the first place as I don’t agree with his approach to veterinary medicine .

LEMtheoriginal -i agree with this - there are other orthopaedic referral centres you could approach for a 2nd opinion which may help you decide what to do .
Not all vets are as well known as some -doesn't mean that they aren't as good .
My opinion remains the same , i would opt for euthanasia.
I can imagine the misery of restricting a dog to cage rest for 8 months , just awful for them .
I think all the vets i work with would say the same , its really sad but we can't fix everything and sometimes the kindest thing is to say goodbye .

I would recommend getting a second opinion from the Davies Vet Specialist clinic in Hitchin. They were superb when our dog needed complex fracture surgery

Also, "cage rest" doesn't literally have to mean staying in a cage. When our dog was put on crate rest after surgery, we didn't actually keep him in a crate (as he hated it) but we kept him on a lead indoors all the time to restrict his movements and carried him around a lot (not practical with a retriever I understand)