As you might imagine, the ones that hold a special place have invariably suffered some illness or injury that has required treatment; a permanent bond formed as they recover.
One such case is a delightful miniature poodle called Holly, who suffer
s from what you might call ever-so-slightly bandy back legs. She wouldn't stop a pig in a passage!
Back in the days when our thoughts were occupied by impending Millennium bugs and when bankers were people respected by the general public, Holly was still in her first flight of youth and this conformational abnormality was already putting undue pressure of her knees.
At the tender age of just two years, Holly started having problems with her left stifle, her kneecap frequently clicking out of line, effectively dislocating. Not only was this intensely painful for her, but it also rendered her hind leg functionally useless.
The kneecap, or more correctly patella, sits in a groove at the base of the thigh bone (femur). Commonly in dogs with Holly's conformational abnormality, the inside wall of this channel becomes flattened which, with a slackened joint capsule, makes patella dislocation almost inevitable.
To correct the problem we quite literally deepen the patella groove and tighten the joint capsule to hold the kneecap in place and in Holly's case this technique was very successful.
However, back in 1999, with her left leg now in order we warned Holly's mum and dad that the same problem was likely to occur in her right knee.
Now 12, she might have been excused for thinking she had got away with it, her right leg holding up well over the intervening years. But almost ten years to the day disaster struck. Though not as active as she used to be, she still has her moments and in a fit of sudden enthusiasm she was bouncing around when she unfortunately twisted her right knee. Yelping in pain, the signs were only too familiar and memories of her problems all those years ago came flooding back.
Examination of the now swollen right knee confirmed that Holly's patella was dislocated, the joint capsule sufficiently stretched to ensure that attempts to manually relocate it were only temporarily successful. In fact, her joint was so unstable that we were suspicious that she had ruptured her supporting cruciate ligament as well, making surgical correction inevitable.
After a few days of strict rest and anti-inflammatories to reduce the swelling, Holly was ready to go back into the operating theatre.
