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Like owner like dog: How to stop play with injured tendon?

1010 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  ilovemypup
Well here's the story:

My flat-coat retriever started limping one day seemingly out of the blue. My wife and I took him to the vet, they did X_rays and a radiologist determined it was not elbow dysplasia. (hooray!). In fact, they said he had really excellent looking bones for a 6 year-old!

OK that's the good news.

But, the bad news was that his tendon (at the elbow) was very inflamed. Vet thought this my be because of dysplasia hence the x-rays, but since they were negative, he believes to be tendonitis. Because my dog plays frisbee almost everyday, our vet says he sees this often in frisbee dogs. The treatment is rest and rimodyl. The problem is the rimodyl makes my dog feel better, so he plays (with the other dogs).

I say like owner like dog because I myself have knee problems, yet I still play basketball because I enjoy it. My knees feel better, so I play and after awhile my knees hurt again. Now, I don't mean to say that my wife or I still throw frisbee with him, in fact we discourage play whenever we see it. Vet told us 6 weeks no play to heal properly. But as I say, like owner like dog.

He is feeling better ( I believe primarily because of the rimodyl), even though we discourage he still will start playing sometimes with the other dogs, and then start limping even if we stop it right away.

I'm, just wondering even humans (myself) who are supremely intelligent species (or so we would like to believe, tho I am not convinced) cannot stop playing when they feel better even though they know they should wait even longer to heal properly.

So how do we stop our dogs from doing the same thing?
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Don't take him out on walks, because even gentle exercise might be too much. When my puppy hurt his side he was so active he ripped one of his stitches! If he wants to play, sit down with him and play gently. I spent the most of two weeks on the floor stroking my dog, hiding while he licked my face etc. If you have other dogs in the house make an exception while he heals and keep him in a separate room...let him out a few times for short periods of time to mix with them but if he gets too excited bring him back in. Visit him lots, of course - treat it as him being in hospital! LOL. If this isn't possible, just watch him while he's awake and don't run or jump around him. There's only so much you can do, and I'm sure you're a great owner anyway.
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