Sally 2026
My last blog post featured Gail, our oldest Labrador Retriever. This blog post is about her sister, Sally. Sally will be celebrating her fourth birthday next month. Sally is a bright and fun-loving dog. She likes to play, training for nose scent work and being rubbed by her Dad. But, it has not always been this way.
After her second birthday, one day when she was swimming at the lake things changed. When she tried to jump onto the step to get in the truck to go home, she whimpered. This whimpering was getting worse each time she had to get in the truck. We took her to our local vet and he told us she had ‘swimmers’ tail’. She would need some rest and it would go away on its own. He also gave us a pain medication that should help. Later that night, I decided to ‘google’ swimmers’ tail. I wanted to make sure Nancy and I didn’t do anything that might impede her healing. As I read various articles, from leading veterinary schools, I realized her symptoms were not that of swimmers’ tail. The next morning, I asked Nancy to review what I had found and she agreed with me.
We set up an appointment with an emergency/specialty veterinary doctor we had previously taken our dogs for treatment. This vet is special! He is a diagnostician who is able to find the problem/injury. After performing some tests, he couldn’t find anything that was definitive. The most likely culprit was she had a soft tissue injury, and we proceeded to treat her for that. Unfortunately for Sally, that was not the problem. We scheduled another appointment and we tried a few other possible treatments. We were getting frustrated, because nothing was working. Sally was in more and more pain as the time went on.
At our next appointment, he suggested that we need to rule out anything neurological. It was unlikely that there was anything neurologically wrong with a dog this young, but we needed to rule this out. It took a long agonizing six weeks before we were able to be seen by the neurologist. He took an x-ray of her lower spine and thought the problem was in her back vertebrate. He prescribed an oral cortisone and said she should start feeling better in a couple of days if this was the problem. By the end of the week, she was doing better.
At our follow-up appointment, we discussed how we should proceed. The neurologist told us the way to find out what kind of an injury she had was to schedule an MRI. Before an MRI could be taken, we had to stop the oral cortisone for two weeks and then bring her back for the MRI. After the MRI, the neurologist showed us that two of her back vertebrates were pinching a nerve and causing the problem. He told us we could keep giving her an oral steroid for a while, but later on that probably wouldn’t help. That would be a a regimen that he would prescribe for an older dog. Surgery was the better way to proceed. We went ahead and scheduled her for back surgery. It had now been over six months since she first was in pain, this was distressing for all of us.
Sally had the back surgery and the doctor told us he thought it was successful, but we probably wouldn’t see any progress in her recovery for about three weeks. In those three weeks were to keep her calm and not let her run around or jump on anything. That is a task for anyone who has a two-year-old dog. After the three weeks, we hadn’t seen any improvement and we scheduled a follow-up check-up. On the morning we were preparing to take Sally for her follow-up visit, we finally saw the first sign that she was getting better. This was the first time Nancy didn’t have to lift her up to help her get in the truck. Sally jumped on the step and into the truck by herself with no squealing or pain. After the visit with the vet, we began her three months of physical therapy. By the end of her third year, she was finally getting back to being a normal dog. This was one extremely long, hard year for all of us.
Sally’s third year has been a year to celebrate. She is back to being herself, a normal three-year-old labrador retriever. She has had a phenomenal year in Nose Scent Work. She has earned at least six or seven qualifications in her quest for the Detective Certificate. Two months ago, she earned her tenth qualification and earned her Detective Certification.
Sally is the only dog we allow on our living room sofa. Whenever I sit on the sofa, Sally is right up there next to me so she can be rubbed. After what she has been through, I am just so happy to see her pain-free acting like a normal three-year-old labrador retriever. Yes, come on up Sally, I will pet you!
