Today on the Kansas State University podcast Dr. James Roush, orthopedic surgeon at Kansas State's Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, details specific injuries and injury prevention techniques for your dog.
Dr. Roush:
The injuries that I see on a daily basis, probably the two biggest groups are trauma fractures in animals in this area and then cruciate ligament ruptures. If you lump all of the developmental diseases in dogs, the growing orthopedic diseases of young dogs that would be a third large group. And then other forms of traumatic injuries for instance tendon lacerations, joint luxation or dislocation, those kind of injuries are sporadic and come as they're seen.
Cruciate ligament ruptures are most common in large breed dogs. They occur really in two different ways that we can recognize. And one of them is the very active dog who is playing frisbee, for instance jumps up in the air comes down, lands on one leg with a little twist and pops it. That would be similar to the way a football player or basketball player would get a cruciate rupture. The other way that it happens is some large breed older dogs tend to develop a little arthritis that may start a slow deterioration of the ligament in their knees and then eventually those go ahead and rupture with even minor injury, stumbling as it goes down a step even walking across the yard type injuries. And so we see them happen in two ways, usually some contributing factors are that the dogs tend to be a little more obese than the normal for the breed or that they're very active hunting and they step in a hole and those kind of things. Or there is starting to be some evidence that there may be a genetic tendency to develop cruciate ruptures. Whether that's bone structure, whether that's ligament composition, whether that's a tendency just to be over weight for body size I don't know what that's been tied to. But there's a couple of breeds where they're starting to suggest a little bit of a possible inheritable tendency.
You know, all the fractures we see, those kind of things a lot of them are related to dogs that are running loose. In almost all dogs that come in here for multiple fractures, have gotten them in either one of two ways. They've been allowed loose or they can run onto a road and get hit or they jump out of the back of pickups where they're unrestrained. That's a common thing in Kansas and not a good idea because even the best behaved dog will see an occasional squirrel and can't resist and go flying out of the pickup. Or we see somewhere, the pickup's in an accident and the dog just gets thrown out as the pickup suddenly stops, too, just like you or I would be if we're unrestrained.
And then the third group, the congenital orthopedic diseases, all of those are related to the nutrition of the dog as a puppy, related to inheritability, because many of the diseases are genetically controlled. And in nutrition specifically, the two things are too much energy, so we're feeding them too many calories when they're puppies, and the second side of that is too high a calcium. In large breed dogs where most of these diseases occur you should never supplement calcium. Most of the arthritis that we see in older dogs is related to either disease that they had, one of those developmental puppy diseases like OCD, or they've had a traumatic injury that's affected a joint sometime in their life. So you know, no older dog that's got hip dysplasia didn't have it as a puppy, they had it as a puppy, they're just starting to clinically show signs because the arthritis is getting worse. An abnormal joint, once you start arthritis, it’s a cascade of enzymes that feeds on itself if you will.
Specific breeds of dogs have specific problems. And its terrible to ask me what breed of dog you should buy because I can name a genetic disease orthopedic related in any dog. But certain breeds of dogs have been proven to have what's called Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, people get it too, kids do, and it's autosomal recessive. Small breed dogs are more likely to have knee cap luxations that get worse as they get older. Large breed dogs are more likely to have hip dysplasia. And certain breeds have a much higher instance of hip dysplasia than others. So that all affects some of the work I do.
Certainly we would see here more cruciate ruptures during the hunting seasons. However a lot of those dogs are lame, people look at them if they're lame and it's a real important trial dog they may get them to a veterinarian immediately. Other people may say well let's see if it gets over it and wait two months so we don't see as strict an on and off cutoff because so many cruciates occur to hunting breed dogs that are pretty active. We see them in those times of year. In similar fashion some of those fractures I've always thought tend to be seasonal. For instance I always think I see more fractures during the months of April and May. As we come out of winter dogs are outside more they're more excited to be outside, they're running a little farther, exploring things. Not many people put their dogs in the back of the pickup at zero degree winter weather, they do it a bit more in the summer. So we see an increase in those at those times.
Probably the most important thing you can do for most of the innate diseases and most of the injuries first of all for the diseases that are genetically controllable check the heritability of the parents. I mean you want to go to conscientious breeders who try to avoid the major genetic diseases in their particular breeds of dogs. Now often mixed breeds of dogs don't tend to have as many of those diseases, because they are mixed breed it's not running in the families. Secondly, you want to control their diet when they are young and then their diet throughout life. So when they're young, again lower calories so that they are not fat little roly poly cute puppies, which is what we want to see as people but what we don't want to see as veterinarians. And you want to really watch their calcium intake. Anytime someone tells you, “Oh, it's a large breed dog it should have a calcium supplement because it's got all its bone growth,” say "no way" because that actually will make them more likely to show the diseases than not. So for instance, Milk Bones are not the best thing to be giving growing puppies. That's a classic thing to think of.
Now one kind of unique treatment that has popped up in dogs is the use of Omega 3 fatty acids in diets. There are several diets out there that are high in Omega 3 fatty acids and they are actually designed to decrease inflammation in the body in general and thus decrease osteoarthritis in its progression in dogs, and there's fairly good research evidence proving that. Some of the glucosamines and chondroitins, there's also some evidence saying those may help in older dogs if you are worried about arthritis. So, weight, diet and then the things that are common sense - don't let your dog ride in the back of your truck unrestrained, don't let your dog out if it has a tendency to run to the road without a leash on it - those will prevent injuries in the long run.
Thank you Dr. Roush. And remember to stay tuned for more podcasts from Kansas State University.