Legg's Perthes Disease:  A vascular necroses occurs when the bone that makes up the ball portion of the hip is damaged from the lack of blood supply, the reason for this is unclear.  A genetic defect is often thought seeing that this is a disease that will more commonly effect one breed over another with Min Pins ranking high on the list of infected breeds.

    Signs of this disease usually appear in infected dogs between four and eleven months of age showing lameness in the one leg.  The effects of this disease can differ from one dog to another depending on severity.  Some dogs are affected with mild discomfort, which would not require extreme medical attention while others may suffer in great pain and deformity of the hips and atrophy of the muscles.  In sever cases medical therapy will not successfully treat the condition and only a surgical procedure will restore health to the dog.

    Surgery to repair this painful disorder consists of removing the femoral head or ball portion of the hip joint.  This reduces the bone on bone contact within the joint.  Recovery from this type of surgery is slow and sometimes painful, taking up to a year before the joint heals to allow use of the affected leg.  Your vet will most likely offer pain reducing medication and anti-inflamatories during the healing process.

    Epilepsy:  In most cases, the true cause of seizure activity in a dog is never determined.  It is believed that the cause of this disorder can be passed down to litters when a dog suffering with seizure activity is used in a breeding program.  Congenial Epilepsy will generally appear in an infected dog between two-three years of age.

    Test must be run on a dog to rule out different causes of seizure activities which can range from Brain tumors, viral illness, trauma, liver disease, kidney disease or hormonal disorders to name a few.  If no cause of the seizure attacks can be determined the dog will be diagnosed with epilepsy.

    Seizure control is an area of debate. While some veterinarians feel control is not needed for mild cases or seizures that don’t occur more than once a month, others feel that control steps should take place much sooner.  Treatment will depend greatly on the severity and occurrence of the attacks.  If your vet feels control is needed for your pet Phenobarbital is most often recommended.

   Although an epileptic attack is seldom fatal it is a heartbreaking and scary experience for the pet owner to witness.  Holding the pet down is seldom recommended for that can often cause more harm than good.  The best thing to do is move any objects the dog can injure itself on and remove all other pets from the area.

    Patellar Luxation: The patella or kneecap is a moveable bone located over the knee that connects the muscles of the thigh to the lower leg.  Patellar Luxation is a dislocation of the kneecap.  This is more often found in smaller breeds of dogs.  More often than not a dog was born with this condition and it was passed down from the parents infecting both legs.

    A symptom your dog may be affected with Patellar Luxation is to see him occasionally holding a leg in the air while he is running then start using it again later.  Sometimes the dog may cry out when this takes place for the kneecap or Patella has popped out of place, then returned.

    Depending on the severity, surgery is often recommended to make the dog more comfortable and to prevent crippling arthritis or deformities.  There are various techniques for correcting patellar Luxation, but regardless of the technique the purpose of the surgery is to re-establish the proper alignment of the quadriceps tendon, the patella, and the patella tendon to prevent a sideways slipping of the kneecap.

    All dogs used in breeding programs should be tested and certified through the OFA (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) with each dog being tested more than once at different ages as some luxation will not be evident until later in life.  Your breeder should show you proof that his/her dogs are tested and have an OFA certificate showing the parents are free of this defect.

    Luxatating Patellas 

Classification

 The patella is permanently luxated with torsion of the tibia and deviation of the tibial crest of between 30 degrees and 50 degrees from the cranial/caudal plane. Although the luxation is not intermittent, many animals use the limb with the stifle held in a semi-flexed position. Flexion and exten-sion of the joint causes abduction and adduction of the hock. The trochlea is very shallow or even flat-tened.

  Grade 4

    Medial Luxations 

    Lateral Luxation 

  Lateral luxation in small breeds is most often seen late in the animal's life, from 5 to 8 years of age. The heritability is unknown. Skeletal abnormalities are relatively minor in this syndrome, which seems to represent a breakdown in soft tissue in response to, as yet, obscure skeletal derangement. Thus, most lat-eral luxations are grades 1 and 2, and the bony changes are similar, but opposite, to those described for medial luxation. The dog has more functional disability with lateral luxation than with medial luxation.

Resource: Orthopedic Foundation For Animals

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