My dog met with an accident

Question
Hi Jana,

My dog met with an accident yesterday. We took him to the vet, the vet said the car hit his hip and their might be a hairline fracture, but it will heal. But today he was not able to move his rear legs, so we again took him to the vet, we even got his x-ray done. It seems the car hit his lower vertebra, due to which some of his nerves got pressed. So the vet is saying that my dog has got paralysed in his lower back. We are really worried for him, he is on pain killers. Can we treat him in some way. Is there any treatment so that the nerves becomes alright and the swelling can be cured. Please help me Jana, we are in distress, time is running out.

Answer
This is a difficult situation. Time is of the essence because after a certain amount of time the damage is pretty much done. Steroids are the drug of choice at this stage to help with the swelling and bruising. If that goes down quickly and the dog has feeling in the rear legs, even if he cannot stand at the moment, he has a better chance of recovering.

It all depends on what the xrays really show. If he has a vertebrae that is knocked out of alignment and into the spinal cord then there is nothing you can do. The main thing is not to live with a false hope-something a vet did to my Mom and Dad causing them much misery. Their dog hurt her back running up a hill. She had a huge blood clot that was crushing her spinal cord and caused a lot of damage- but he performed a very expensive surgery when it was not going to work. It would have been better had they known that she wouldn't walk again and deal with that then weeks of lifting her and hoping all for nothing.

So the point is get the real truth now about his injury before you agree to any surgeries or expensive treatments if he only has a 5-10% chance of walking again.

I know this is so terribly hard to do but you do not want him to suffer either. Do what you can now with drugs, ice, whatever you can do for the swelling and then evaluate the situation in a week or so.

That is about all I can offer to you at this point. You might want to call a teaching vet hospital and ask them what they can do.

Please let me know what happens. I will pray for him.