Degenerative Myelopathy

Hello everyone,
I have a female who turned 10 years old November 28th, 2018.

All her life she has been an extremely active, athletic, agile, and healthy dog. For a 10 year old, she is more active than allot of two year old dogs.

She is a Bolio/scatter bread dog that has been feed a raw diet her entire life.

About 4 nights ago when I was outside with her I noticed (for the first time), that she was walking wobbly and uncoordinated on her hind legs.
I honestly was thinking that she may have hurt her self playing with her brother and that by the next day or so she would be back to normal.
Well as of today Saturday December 22nd, 2018; she is still not back to normal. And unfortunately she is displaying all of the symptoms of degenerative myelopathy (wobbly, uncoordinated, knuckling, in hind legs).

This is somewhat surprising to me because I have never experience this before (and I have had many bulldogs).

I know this disease shows up in older dogs but honestly, 10 years for my dogs is equivalent to about 4-5 year old in other breeds. Her brother is still healthy as an ox (he is actually too energetic:-)).

But has any one dealt with this before? What can I do for her? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Thank you.

God Bless you all!

 

I hope you get some answers for your old girl. Good luck to you both.

 

I have an eight-year-old pure Colby Bitch, Townsend's Raven Oden, and she had the same symptoms. I got extremely worried, so I took her to my veterinarian. Dr Wagner a Bulldog owner herself recognized right off what was going on with her . She actually had gotten bit by tick . Dr Wagner, ran her on avabo 15 days medicine and she's fine now. I would suggest that you go to a good vet .

 

Good info..could well be a possibility.something you wouldn't think of really.

 

We live in the country. There's a hunting club at the end ofoour street, where great deer, hog, dove, raccoon whatwhave you. Also we have lots of wld coyotes a few red wolves, ect. I neglected to mention that Raven also had glands that were swollen big Time underneath her neck..

 

Yeah I walk the dogs by lots of cattle and sheep..so will watch out for that..thanks.

 

How is your bitch doing now? Any better? Ticks can carry some very nasty diseases. You might want to take her to your vet and have a blood panel done to see if it shows anything.

There is also something called coon hound paralysis which I think has similar symptoms, the weakness in the back end, might be worth reading about that one.

Or she could have hurt her spine in playing, that could cause pain and weakness in an older dog too.

Hope you can find out what is going on and that she is doing better.