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Lena - A Dog in Need
Lena first came into DAR&E in 2004. On her morning running route, a woman saw a young Dobe chained to a tree on a busy street. Long story short, the owners were in a marital conflict and were not caring for, feeding or watering her. The owner’s signed Lena over to the woman who in turn got her to DAR&E. She was adopted quickly and thought she had found her forever home. It was not to be. At 6 years old, Lena lived with her new owners just over 5 years when they returned her to DAR&E in April 2010.
Once Lena was in our care, we noticed that she was very unstable. She stumbled a lot on her front end, sometimes knuckling over on her front paws and actually walking several steps that way before correcting herself. At times, if she took a misstep she would fall over. When she walked, it was obvious Lena had very little range of motion in her shoulders so that her steps were very short. Also with each step, she dragged her front paws to the point that if she was walking on cement or some other hard surface, her toenails bled since they were so ground down. X-rays showed mineralization in several of the discs in her neck. The vet believed there was more going on than what was showing up in the x-rays given the degree of her neurological deficits that were being seen.
Lena was quickly moved into foster care and was doing well. She ccould run, although it was a funny-looking gait. She used her hind legs together to propel her and give her front end a lift. She actually moved better at that speed than at a walk. Lena started to want to play with the other dogs and sometimes did that playful run around the yard on her own. We think Lena was hurting for quite a while in her prior home. When she was surrendered, her owner’s wrote that she was hyper; didn’t want to settle down. We believe the “hyper” was Lena in pain and not able to get comfortable, so she paced. After being on pain medications, Lena settled down nicely in her foster home.
DAR&E was in the process of evaluating Lena to access her quality of life. She did appear to be in discomfort at times. Further evaluation and tests were necessary to decide what road to take with our Miss Lena.
UPDATE: May 2010 Lena came to DAR&E a little over a month ago with some neurological issues. After being in foster care, it became evident that things were worse than we thought. At first, even though she drug her front feet when she walked, it wasn’t enough to cause any problems. As time went on though, she started dragging them more and was rubbing the tops of her toes so much that they bled. Booties helped, but they wouldn’t stay on outside so there was no way her toes could heal. She also had started showing weakness in her hindquarters which made navigating around more difficult for her. She had good times; she loved to run (sort of) across the back yard and in the woods, but her energy was short-lived and the more tired she was the worse her mobility was. Because of her spinal issues her front-end was really stiff and it was getting harder for her to lie down. The pain meds really helped, but it still was sad to see her try to overcome her physical limitations. Ultimately it got to the point where her struggle compromised the quality of her life to the extent that it was time to let her go. |
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Lena |
