What are we to do about Waffle’s limp?
Some time at the beginning of the year I noticed Waffle, our three year old working cocker, seemed to skip the odd step with her back left leg. Rather as if she had just got something in her paw, or trodden on something painful. But it didn’t seem to worry her at all. No yelp or visible sign of distress; just carried on at high speed doing whatever she was doing. I checked the paw a couple of times and she didn’t mind or flinch so I returned to my first theory that she was just hitting the odd awkward spot. And then of course my daughter came home, who is rather more observant than me, and she complained Waffle had a limp and what was I doing about it?
No she hasn’t, I said. Look. And we took her out and studied her closely. Nope not a thing. Well I didn’t make it up, complained the daughter. No darling, ‘course not.
But all the same there was obviously something going on. It did occur to me that she might have done something when she fell out the back of the beaters’ lorry last year. She didn’t quite make the long jump up and fell backwards trapping her leg between the lowered tail gate and bodywork. She really did yelp then.
The shoot’s cocker expert, who also happens to be an ambulance driver and paramedic went to work feeling all the likely bits but she just wagged her tail furiously, looked terribly pleased with all the attention and carried on as before. All the same after the daughter’s intervention I kept a closer eye on her and sure enough, if you paid attention the leg would suddenly come up off the ground.
As it happened she was due a jag at the vet so he felt her all over and cranked one leg, then the other and pronounced that yes, it wasn’t anything very serious but there was some bit, with a complicated name, which he could feel that was likely to pop out or unhook which meant the leg just mechanically retracted. So I described the fall from the lorry which he didn’t think came into it.
She’d probably be fine and just carry on like that, he said. Until she couldn’t. Which wasn’t terribly helpful, adding “It could be hereditary.”
Which is all exactly what you don’t want to hear if you are thinking of breeding. As neither her parents or brothers or sisters have, as far as I know, exhibited the same trait, it’s hard to know what to think apart from knowing she isn’t in pain and according to the vet doesn’t even know it’s happening.
Which leaves us nowhere really, except with the prospect of another bill for an X-ray. n