My dog is paralyzed!

Sammy's big ordeal

A couple of years ago, Sammy ruptured a disk in his back and had trouble walking. He was only 3 years old, but he was completely paralyzed from halfway down his back to his little toes.

It was the dead of winter, and freezing cold out. In fact, everything was covered in a thin layer of ice. One morning, when I let them out, I noticed Sammy was dragging his back end around on the ice. It was pitiful. Of course, I immediately took him to the vet.

It happened to be the day after Christmas, so my regular vet was on vacation, but I was able to get Sammy in to another vet on duty that day. Sammy didn't feel anything when the doctor squeezed his paws. He didn't react at all.

The vet said it could go two ways: Either the disk would, over time, repair itself and Sammy would get some function, although how much function was impossible to say; or Sammy would need surgery, and the sooner the better in order for him to get as much function back as possible.

Unfortunately, with it being the Christmas holidays, finding a qualified doctor to do this surgery right away would be difficult if not impossible, not to mention extremely expensive.

I decided to nurse Sammy myself and hope for the best.

My doggie in diapers

Poor little Sammy spent the next few months in a playpen wearing diapers. The vet didn't want him dragging himself around the house because he was likely to get rug burns without feeling it, and those sores could easily get infected. So I put him in the playpen and put the playpen up in the bay window seat so he could look outside while I was at work.

To exercise him, I wrapped a towel under his tummy to act as a sling, and we would go running down the block. Sammy loved that, and he would run really fast with his front legs, his back legs just limp behind him slung in the towel-sling. Come to think of it, he got away from me once and was amazingly fast going over the ice and snow with his two front legs, dragging his hind quarters behind.

I also learned some pet massage techniques, and would slowly massage his back and legs every day. Sammy loved that.

Every morning, I would pick him up out of the playpen and take his diaper off and put him in the tub to bathe him. I wondered if this smelly, unfortunate situation would ever change.

After a month or so, while giving him his bath each morning, I would try to try to prop him up to see if he could balance on those back legs, and it seemed like maybe some function was coming back. But then he would slump back down in the tub.

A breakthrough

One day, when I put his food in his bowl and sat him in front of it, he all of a sudden leaned forward toward the bowl and stood up on his back legs! I couldn't believe it! Of course, he fell back down, but it was the very beginning of a long, long journey back to all fours!

Day after day, week after week, month after month, Sammy improved. His walking became less wobbly and more stable. Over time, he was able to actually run, although his running looked more like a bunny rabbit than a dog, with his two back legs pumping together. And he was often off-kilter, those two back legs going from side to side, then a fall, then up again and hopping.

Now, two and a half years later, I would say he's about 90 percent back to normal. He has all his old energy (he never lost that, actually), can go for long walks again, and most of the time walks and runs normally. Occasionally, when he's running fast at the dog park, he'll "wipe out," but he'll just pick himself up again and keep on going, chasing all the other dogs and having a blast.

I hope this is an encouraging story for anyone who has a dog that loses mobility. It IS possible that it will come back, possibly all the way back to normal. (It's also very possible that Sammy will have another episode of paralysis due to another ruptured disk. Unfortunately, it's common that these episodes reoccur.) Pet massage has its place in the whole scheme of things. Letting nature take its course also has its place; try to be patient and stay positive. And let those little doggie nerves slowly grow back.