[pickled_onions]

I may have some experience with this issue, first off my older dog Pickle is a corgi mix

He is suppose to be in the 18-21 lb range and we let him get too far past that as he is a chow hound, he got up to 25 lbs at one point and now he's around 21 lbs.

Well he was playing with his brother Onion and some how he dislocated his knee as well, and he gave out a yelp than could not walk. He limped his way into his crate and started trembling badly.

So we took him into the vet the same day, and they gave him x ray and also this powerful pain killer medicine to take home and he was on it for 3 days to relieve the pain and allow him to rest better. He was confined to crates whenever we could not watch him to make sure he didn't over exert himself.

Docs recommendations, first off they said he was a grade 2-3 on the laxating patella thing which was causing his lameness. All vet speak for saying he's at the point where its savable, he said grade 4 is when you'll need drastic issues like surgery.

1. If your dog is overweight keep him within his weight range, it'll be less stress on his knee joints.
2. Keep your dog to low energy play only, after he/she is fully healed. Right now it may just mean letting your dog rest a lot, give TLC.
3. No more jumping, ever! Pickle would always have free roam in the house when we're home or not home, because he doesn't wreck anything. He loved sitting on our sofa, but whenever the neighbor, postman, servicemen, even jehova witness would knock on our door or the neighbor's door (we live in a open condo community so we share a common entrance) he would leap off the sofa and land on his legs causing damage.
- We resorted to fencing up the sofa entirely, no more high surfaces for Pickle to get on. Even a 2 foot jump for a dog is damaging in the long term.
4) I don't know how much this helps but I am giving my dogs, both of them, those joint supplement things, bought a bunch from Costco and I feed it to him with food.

None the less, I carry Pickle up and down the stairs now, even though he shows no signs of knee issues right now. I noticed through research you want to trim/clip the nails to make sure they aren't too long, if it's long they mess the balance of their walk causing undue stress. Sadly he no longer gets to sleep on the bed, since he has been known to hop off the bed at night.

Ultimately this is an issue with many breeds of dog, I think the only thing we can do is prevention, as they get older it'll get worse, but anything we can do to prevent the need for surgery is a win, the vet would not recommend us to go through surgery because that's too major, unless it was at a point where it hindered Pickle's ability to even walk.

Sorry this is a long response, I hope Winni feels better, I'm sure he/she will recover from this. About a month after we took Pickle to the vet he was playing with Onion and he must of snagged a loose carpet or something but it happened again, this time he recovered within a few hours, but his last episode has been over 4 months now (knock on wood) that it doesn't come back.

Good luck and sorry this must be stressful seeing them in pain.