Hello and welcome to Peggy Pumpkin. She is just too cute! I must apologise. It took way too long to get this story out, but I had to share.

Poor Peggy was a rescue and a very small, young puppy. She arrived at the DBARC rescue centre. They soon noticed she was not using her back leg well. On exam, it was not able to extend properly.

With such a young dog, it’s hard to know exactly what is wrong, and there are anaesthetic risks, so no one was keen to do anything risky. Meanwhile, Peggy was super happy and couldn’t really care that her poor knee didn’t work well.

It was hard to decide whether this was due to an injury that had not been taken to the vets and now fused badly, or if it was a genetic problem formed during development in the womb.

This patient needed a lot of thought and care. We had to be mindful that whilst we wanted to get a better range of movement in the stifle, we also needed to ensure she was able to do her proper and good puppy development of puppy behaviour.  It’s very important we don’t cause problems with development that may lead to an unhappy dog with high anxiety or fear aggression due to us forcing our exercise needs on them in an unhealthy way.

I set a healthy plan of stretching and exercises that encouraged the use of the limb. We hoped we could get the stifle range to increase and allow for normal development.

We did manage to get a small amount of improvement, and we managed to build up a small amount of muscle. We certainly did build her strength and balance as she was really struggling with the weight of the limb to begin, and it was making her move diagonally.

However, it was clear that she was growing, and the limb was now getting further from the ground, so to use it, she had to stoop down to stand on it. This was far from ideal, and she didn’t use it often.

By now, we had supported her long enough to get her to a safer age for further investigation. It was decided that she would need an amputation.

The limb was amputated, but the awesomeness news is that due to all the work in advance of this, her recovery was awesome and she adapted very quickly to the limb going. 

They really can cope so well with 3 legs.

A huge well done to DBARC for her rescue and to her incredible Foster mum. She invested so much time and love into that puppy, and there was a fair amount of tears of worry.