Aspen the Yorkie

It’s been about a month and a half since the Veterinarian diagnosed Aspen with a cruciate ligament tear in one of her hind legs.  In spite of all of our attentiveness and care, a little over a week ago, the other leg sustained the same injury.  She is watched over almost constantly, and this happened during a moment when she simply tried to go up a small step, it didn’t take much.

Now that a week has passed, she is still limited, but moving about more than she did again due to some measure of healing, and again needs to be watched carefully so that she keeps on healing.

Thankfully, she is a dog with a good nature, and being older, tends to rest a lot anyway, but she misses the very thing she should never have been doing at her age, jumping up and down from the couch, and is learning to be content with her bed on the floor and occasional times up next to us on the couch or chair when we lift her and take her down.

We have a special harness for her now that supports her body from front to back with the hook that the leash attaches to toward the back rather than the neck are.  This helps to take some of the weight off of her back legs when walking…she it taking her time getting used to this.  Though she has hobbled about just a bit when she needs to go out and take care of business, this week we are trying to do just a little more controlled walking…nothing too active…to build and maintain her leg muscles and mobility.

She is on a anti-inflammatory pain medicine for dogs right now, but soon we hope to switch over to a Glucosamine/Chondroiton product in order to preserve what is left of the cartilage in the joints that will now rub together un-naturally due to her injury.

We will keep you updated on her progress and if you can learn anything from our experience, when your Yorkie reaches a certain age, don’t allow them to jump up and down.

A collapsing or collapsed trachea in a small dog is caused by a weakening in the rings of cartilage that hold the trachea open so that your dog can breath.  Some dogs are born with this weakened condition, others develop the condition with age. While the condition is not limited to small dogs, it is most common in small dogs.

The trachea in dogs, humans and most other mammals is the “tube” that runs from the nose and throat that carries air to and from the lungs…it can also be called the windpipe.  When it is collapsing or collapsed, dogs make an unusual sound caused by what some call backwards coughing…a sound like a honk.

Many dogs have this condition occasionally or chronically and live normal healthy lives.  If your dog is “honking” often and over an extended period of time, please do see your veterinarian as he or she will teach you how to manage the condition and perhaps suggest medications that will open up the breathing.  Surgery is not often needed.

If the characteristic cough is just occasional, your dog should be fine, this is up to you to determine.

Here are a couple of things we do:

When I (Aspen) cough like this, my owner gently lifts my head and strokes under my neck…she didn’t read about doing this anywhere, it’s just something she did one day, and it helped.  Maybe it helped me relax, maybe it helped open the trachea, we don’t know, it just worked…but it’s just a gentle lift and very gentle stroking, nothing more.

DO NOT walk a dog using  a regular collar with this condition, use a harness.  In fact, do this anyway with a small dog as a collar could contribute to causing the problem.

Do more research on the condition online, there is quite a bit of information out there, and thank you for visiting, we hope we helped you learn a bit more about tracheal collapse and hope you find help with your dogs collapsed trachea.

It seems that as the years go by, a dogs skin gets more and more sensitive to allergies, dry skin and other uncomfortable things. I have always been sensitive to grasses and pollens…we’re not sure exactly which ones, but the rashes and dark blotchy spots seem to come out in the warmer weather. At first we thought it was because of the flea treatment, but it’s not. We are having a milder winter with no snow, so the grass is always exposed, and the rash is not going away like it usually does in the winter.

At first my owner thought that washing me was the best thing to do to get the allergens off and to clean my skin. We are learning that this is not such a good idea, depending upon what shampoo you use. We thought baby shampoo would be a good idea, but over-washing with many shampoos removes the natural oils from the skin, making me even more itchy and my skin even more scaly in spite of the fact that I smell so good.

We have read that using aloe based shampoo will help, so we are considering this…not shampoo that contains aloe, but is actually aloe based. Another idea my owner has is a rinse with aloe vera juice. Oatmeal and Aloe Shampoo is supposed to help, and we are going to try a Hydrocortisone Spray with Aloe Vera for the extra itchy spots.

What have you done for dry skin for your dog? We are open to suggestions and will let you know how we do in treating my dry skin.

We learned the hard way about impacted anal glands and how to express them.  I got sick during our own natural disaster, Hurricane Irene, and my owners were doing their best to keep up with flooding issues and me not feeling well at the same time.

I couldn’t tell them that it wasn’t just the Pancreatitis that I’d had before…but something more.  At first it seemed like I was doing better when they started treating me for the Pancreatitis, but then one Saturday I was miserable and in pain.  These are the things I did to try to let my owners know what was wrong, and some things that they should have picked up if they weren’t so distracted by the weather, power failure, etc.:

• I scooted around dragging my bottom on the floor, they just thought it was itchy, but it was more than that
• I licked myself a lot trying to clean my anal area, which made me feel sick..and icky thing to have to do
• I didn’t have an appetite.
• I skulked around the house with my head down, flopping down wherever I felt like it.
• My belly felt bloated and distended, and felt hot, I was feverish

Finally my owner looked online, and through searching for different things about dogs anal glands, she found that they can need what they call “expressing” and if they aren’t cleaned, they can get impacted.  She realized I had all the symptoms she was reading about, and tried to find a video on how to express the anal glands.  There were a few, but this is one that you can see really well, and of a small dog, so it was most helpful:

BUT, my owner couldn’t do this, and decided to take me to the vet (finally) after the weekend. The vet said that because I had diarrhea, maybe from stress related to the storm, he wanted to hydrate me so gave me fluids under the skin. Also told my owner to continue to treat me for the Pancreatitis, and then he expressed the glands. He said that they were very full and that what they contained was thick, so hard to express.

I came home and now it’s over a week later, and I’m fine…got better almost right away after that, and now my owner will know the signs and symptoms that show the anal glands need to be expressed.