Hip Dysplasia and how we helped our lab

My 5 year old Labrador retriever has been diagnosed with hip dysplasia.  I’ve talked about it before and you can get caught up by reading my articles on Hip Dysplasia Help and Joint Issues with My Sweet Dog. We’ve been dealing with his hip dysplasia for over a year. He’s doing really well and I just wanted to give an update to what we have done for him.

We tried to give him glucosamine and chondroitin and even giving it with food we couldn’t manage to get him to keep it down. So, we looked at other things we could do. We have some great news. After putting the baby bed mattress on the floor our baby has had hardly any problems with his hips this year. He had one day where he had issues. We took him down to visit his parents who live on some acreage and he acted like a baby. He ran all around the yard and just kept going. He probably ran for 40 minutes or more and he would have ran more but we stopped him. The next day he paid for it.

You can tell when they hurt. Even if they don’t tell you. He wouldn’t climb stairs. He wouldn’t sit down and if he did he tried to stand right back up again. He was just hurting without telling us. Other times he’d whimper and whine and let us know how bad he hurt. Other than the one day when he went to my in laws he’s not whined all year. Sleeping on that cushy mattress has helped him so much.  He still tries to sleep on the floor. As soon as we catch him we make him get on his bed. We only want whats best for him and we’re trying! If your baby has hip issues try putting a baby mattress on the floor and requiring that they sleep there. It’s made a huge difference in the life of my lab baby! Let me know if you try it and have good results!