Articles with limping

Canine Iliopsoas Injuries Symptoms: Sometimes You Don’t Even Know What You’re Looking At—Cookie’s Hind Legs Transiently Fail To Work

Canine iliopsoas injuries symptoms can be anything from subtle signs that you can easily miss to profound lameness. These injuries often go undiagnosed in dogs. Things you might notice in your dog include difficulty or stiffness when getting up reluctance to jump gait changes/ outward rotation of the affected leg stance changes intermittent lameness not lifting a leg to pee…

by Jana Rade

A Word on Compensation: The Domino Effect

The body adopts an abnormal posture that compensates for the weakness by a redistribution of body weight. I get to write about myself because I believe it is relevant to dogs as well. Sue already wrote an excellent article about compensation, but this is my recent personal experience. My story I don’t get hurt often. When I do get hurt…

by Jana Rade

Foot Wounds in Dogs: Cookie’s Plantar Paw Pad Injury

Dog paw pads are tough but they can still be cut by sharp objects. Cut pads take their sweet time to heal because the edges are pushed apart with weight-bearing. Cookie’s paw pad injury The new territories we’ve been exploring include neighboring fields that are open and far enough from the swamp. They are surrounded by woods and we walk…

by Jana Rade

Acute Lameness in a Dog: JD’s Leg Injury And Hip Dysplasia

Here is the logic of health issues in dogs – an acute problem likely has an acute cause. Doesn’t it make sense that a disease progressive in nature would have a progressive onset? Some conditions can wax and vane with a dog having some good day and some bad days. But what if the dog is perfectly fine one minute…

by Jana Rade

Unresolved Lameness in a Dog: Why Is That Leg Still Not Happy? Cookie’s Leg Keeps Getting Sore

Regardless of the problem at hand, if your dog’s treatment isn’t working, there are two possible reasons. Either the diagnosis is wrong, or the approach to fixing it is. Either way it means going back to the drawing board. Cookie’s story It all started when Cookie had a run-in with an electric horse fence. We thought her leg was sore…

by Jana Rade

Jana Rade

I am a graphic designer by day, dog health advocate, dog writer, member of the Dog Writers Association of American and an award-winning author. Jasmine, the Rottweiler of my life, was the largest female from her litter. We thought we were getting a healthy dog. Getting a puppy from a backyard breeder was our first mistake. Endless veterinary visits without a diagnosis or useful treatment later, I realized that I had to take Jasmine's health care in my own hands. I learned the hard way that simply seeing a vet is not always enough. There is more to finding a good vet than finding the closest clinic down the street. And, sadly, there is more to advocating for your dog's health than visiting a veterinarian. It should be enough but it often is not. With Jasmine, it took five years to finally get a diagnosis for her initial issue. Unfortunately, other problems had snowballed for that in the meantime. Jasmine's health challenges became a crash course in understanding dog health issues and how to go about getting a proper diagnosis and treatment. I had to learn and I had to learn fast. Helping others through my challenges and experience has become my mission and Jasmine's legacy. I now try to help people how to recognize and understand signs of illness in their dogs, how to work with their veterinarian and when to seek a second opinion. My goal is to save others the steep curve of having to learn things the hard way as I did. That is the mission behind my blog and behind my writing. That is why I wrote Symptoms to Watch for in Your Dog, which has turned out being an award-winning guide to dog owners . What I'm trying to share encompasses 20 years of experience.

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