Our poor old boy, Little Bear, is with the vet today. He’s been having trouble with arthritis but it has gotten quickly and progressively worse since the first weekend in August. It’s to a point that he basically can’t walk on his right front leg and his back two legs are weak; he’s wobbly and can’t balance. The vet said that on a scale of 1-10, his pain is probably 11. It’s hard to believe because these changes all happened so fast. The only hope for any quality of life for Little Bear at this point is to try cortisone injections in his elbows and that’s what the vet is going to do for him today. He will be anesthetized for the procedure. Once Little Bear is awake, alert and walking around, we’ll be able to go pick him up.
Little Bear getting weighed at the vet’s this morning. He was so afraid:
If the cortisone is successful, it should help Little Bear for one to twelve months. There’s a slim chance that the cortisone won’t be successful. We adopted Little Bear almost 14 years ago, when he was a just a few weeks old and the thought of not having him around anymore breaks our hearts, yet that seems to be what we are having to try to begin to accept.
Little Bear being taken to the back for his procedure:
I hope and pray it all goes well and can’t wait to have our boy back home later today. I need to keep my myself busy so that I’m not crying all day and I do plan to work on an image to upload at some point before the day is over.
Oh Julie,
This is the hard part of loving a dog for so long……I hope the shots works too, my 11 year rescue pup is starting to have some issue with arthritis too…..It breaks my heart to see how afraid he is…..I know that road you are looking down, it is a tough one. Email me at
sa*******@gm***.com
if you would like to talk….Give him a hug for me….:) Sandy
Thank you for your words of kindness, Sandy. They mean the world to me.
Our long-time vet retired recently. Our new vet recommends fish oil pills for dogs, (for arthritis and other things) and glucosamine. Little Bear has been on glucosamine for a couple years but we’ve just started him on the fish oil. I wish we would have known that a long time ago – may have helped before things got this bad. Perhaps your dog will benefit from them.
I will give Little Bear a hug for you. 🙂