Elbow dysplacia

[Elbows123]

My spaniel has been diagnosed with elbow dysplasia. We will not be able to afford surgery- are there any alternative treatment / management paths?

I have a Chow with ED, she's 5 now and living a happy life with daily metacam and riaflex. The biggest struggle is trying to keep her weight within reasonable levels! She does have excellent hips and good muscles so that helps.

Pain relief and a brace can help, Orthopets are good for braces. If you get a prescription from your vets for the pain relief you can order the medication online much cheaper- try pet drugs online, your vet may mention it to you.
PDSA offers surgery for a donation if certain benefits are in payment.

Does your pet insurance not cover it?

Pet insurance is unlikely to cover all the costs, can still leave thousands left to pay. I still had to contribute £3.5k to my dogs op.

Thank you. Are you able to walk her? X

My pet insurance paid the full costs for my dogs op apart from the excess which was around £100.

@Shmithecat2

Does your pet insurance not cover it?

Unfortunately many people don't have sufficient insurance to cover operations like this - they can easily run into the thousands, especially if both elbows need treatment.

How old are they?

It’ll very much depend what type of elbow dysplasia and how severe it is.

Sometimes limiting weight bearing exercise, putting them on painkillers and doing things like hydrotherapy and laser treatment can be a better option over surgery...but not for all types of dysplasia.

But if you’re picking by cost, management can be a false economy tbh because as soon as you’re doing anything more than just NSAIDs (and with longterm ones you’d want stomach protectants and occasional blood tests) costs rack up anyway.

Management might be a better route for the dog, but it isn’t necessarily cheap.

What type of dysplasia is it? If it's an HIF/IOHC type issue you can get prophylactic surgery on your insurance.

My lad has just had scan and it came back all clear, but had some good advice on the condition

@Elbows123

Thank you. Are you able to walk her? X

If you mean me, yes, to a limited extent but we have a large garden where she can move at her own pace as much or as little as she likes. The fact that her muscle mass is still more than adequate is also a useful sign. If we didn't have that we would tailor walks to how she seems week by week or even day by day. She is blood tested every 6 months to check how she is coping with her medication.