Sad day for the Sophie Bear.

I am going to make this as short and sweet due to the nature of the topic and the risk of me drenching my keypad with tears. [A little dramatic, yes. But you’ll understand – maybe?]

Two weeks ago after picking Sophie up from my moms [Tuck and Soph spend each working day at Grandpa and Yaya’s because they don’t know how to bark quietly,] we noticed that Sophie was limping. Thinking at first she most definitely had something stuck in her paw we checked that and everything looked and felt fine. We thought that she may have just been playing too rough with the other pups during the day. So, we slept on it. And let Soph get a real good night of sleep. The next few days the limp got progressively worse.Fearing we would be like the boy who cried wolf we held off a few days to take her to the vet. {Before you start to freak out – let me explain that she was walking okay with just a limp but sometimes it was worse and she wouldn’t put any weight on it at all – she was running and playing with the dogs and her brother like normal. Reason number two we thought it was something minor like a pulled muscle or splinter.}

Week passes – not getting any better. Vet needed.

Thomas took Soph into the vet on Thursday and proceeded to have to have some x-rays taken of her leg. They ended up having to put her under some mild sudation in order to stretch her leg in the correct position to get a good picture. The vets first diagnoses was that she had hip dysplasia. Option: #1- Expensive surgery with no guarantee of ever being 100% or the chance of the other one going out, also known as, low quality of life. Option # 2- Put her down.  Option # 3 – Live with pain management.

Now bring on some of those tears mentioned earlier.

The vet’s diagnoses was just off of the x-ray but like humans the x-rays needed to be looked at by a radiologist. The radiologist said something different.

Sophie has a rare disease called legg-calve-perthes. Which in lamens terms is her hip joint and femur aren’t growing right and causing slight (for now) pain. In the rare cases that develop it’s usually between 5 and 8 months. From there is can get progressively worse. The options are similar to that of hip dysphasia except for the fact that the chances of it impacting the other leg or limb is only 12% if we chose to have surgery. As of now Thomas and I are leaning towards surgery. We have a pretty good savings and both of us agree this is well worth every penny. Sophie is our daughter and will be for a long time. Many people think we are a bit crazy to think to even spend a portion of what we are going to but with med school still a ways off – these are our babies.

Sophie is such a trooper though; she runs and plays just as hard now as she ever has. She is still in that crazy fun puppy stage and loves anything exciting. She loves chasing her brother and tries to avoid the stairs at all cost. The end of the nights are harder because the fun of the day starts to bite her in the bum and causes some pretty severe limping. It does break my heart quite often to see her hurting. I have had a few really hard nights where I just cried myself to sleep. But, her kisses make everything seem better for the moment. I need to be strong for her, like any other mommy would.

We are still waiting for some last thoughts from the vey before advancing under the knife. We’ll keep you all posted …. But in the mean time enjoy some of these oh so cute Sophie moments.

  

You'll be feelin better soon, Soph!