Shiloh

I know that I won't be able to do this tomorrow, so I am doing this tonight. Tomorrow afternoon, we have a 3:45 appointment with the vet. We have made the decision to put Shiloh down. This has been heart wrentching for us. We have struggled with this for the last 6 months. For those who don't know...Shiloh has a congenital defect. It is a called a luxating pattella. Basically her knee-cap dislocates on a regular basis. I can pop it back in, or by streching her leg out she pops it back in herself. Yes, this can be very painfull. We have been doing home treatments for her for almost two years. I have talked to two different vets plus other owners of great pyrs who have had this problem. There is a surgery to correct it. We oppted not to persure surgery for several reasons. It is not always successful. There is a minimum recovery time of 12 weeks that Shiloh would have had to stay confined unless we were taking a potty break and then only 5 minutes on her feet at time. With bigger dogs you run the risk that they over compenstate with their good leg during the recovery time and end up damaging the good leg. One great pyr owner ended up have to do two knee surgeries plus a hip replacement to correct the problem. In addition to that, we just can't afford $2000 worth of surgeries. We did our research and the home treatment we chose was the same that you would use for and older, arthritic dog. She was given 2000mg of glucosomine, fish oil, and flaxseed oil twice a day. After a year of this is when her leg became more painful and we started pain meds. She was given tramadol everyday and rimadyl on extra bad days. We've noticed increasingly in last few months, that she is slowly getting worse. You would have to be with her every day to see this. When she is in motion, she is ok. But when she stands still her back legs shake (we suspect that her good leg is now starting to be affected) and she has a harder time getting up after she has been laying down more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes, all she can do is lay there and wag her tail. I can tell that she wants to get up and come over to me but she just can't. We love her and that is why we are doing this. She is already in pain, and it is not fair to let it continue.