Your Questions About Dog Pain Relief Aspirin

Use of aspirin for dogs?

My dog has, I believe, hip dysplasia. Her mother has it and we have given her 80 mg aspirin in the past with relief of her pain but my youngest pup (2 yrs old) may have degeneration. She is only about 2-3 lbs. What about aspirin for her? I am on fixed income and can not afford vet. She is so special and I don’t want to do anything to hurt her or lose her but she will sometimes get up and fall with her back legs not able to move. This only lasts for a very short while (a minute or two) and then she is up and moving. Has anyone had this problem? The vet saw her mother and said that the hip dysplasia she had was hereditary.

Aspirin for use in dogs?

I want to thank all the people who answered kindly to my question of use of aspirin for my chihuahua. Thanks for the info re shelter with vet, there is one in the town next to us. I will use that avenue. To the ones who were so cruel with your answers, I’m sure that you love dogs but apparently don’t like the owners very much. We bought our first dog 4 years ago. When it was time for her to have puppies we took her back to the breeder we got her from and used him. AFTER she had her puppies I found out she had hip dysplasia, heredirty. I have had all 3 female dogs (mother, 2 daughters) spayed. I have also had my son’s dogs spayed, so you see, I am concerned about reproduction. I was working but have become disabled and my finances have changed (since I got my puppies). I cannot work and my dogs and my laptop computer (which I bought before my financial circumstances) are my only relief and happiness. I truly hope that this gives some of you folks some comfort to know that I am not using animals in some cruel way. Another thing, I got the mother 1 month before Katrina. I live in Ocean Springs and part of my circumstances are due to Katrina. Please, Please do not judge people from one very short e-mail. There usually is a story behind each circumstance and since my dogs are my life, a cruel answer hurts. I had also been taking care of my aunt, who was age 90, and she passed away one month after Katrina. If you need more information or don’t understand what is going on, please ask questions, don’t attack. Apparently some of you love animals but don’t like people. I shouldn’t make that assumption either but I certainly don’t need anything else thrown at me to cause me more pain when I am so worried about my puppies.

Pat

Please be kind with this. I have an ethical dilemma with regard to possibly putting my dog down. Help?

I am going to try to explain this as best I can. You MUST put yourselves in our position to answer this. If you’re just going to come up with the first value judgment that pops into your head without trying to realize that the decision is being made in the context of our lives, which may have no similarity to yours, then you’re just going to be harmful to another human being for no reason.

We love our dog. He is a sweet boy and he’s been a great member of our family. But he’s 11.5 years old and has been going very slowly down hill for about the last 3 years. He has already popped the tendons in both of his back legs (We didn’t treat it because we only knew he got hurt, we didn’t know what it was. We gave him something for pain and he started walking better in a few days.). He has strange non-cancerous growths on various parts of his body, one of which is on the rim of his lower eyelid. It has to be insanely annoying. Now he appears to have a UTI of some sort that isn’t clearing up on it’s own (I gave him AZO and an appropriate dosage of aspirin at infrequent intervals and that seemed to give him some relief, but didn’t cure it). He releases a lot of air when he urinates which makes us think he has a perforation in this bladder or intestine. Sometime in the next few days, probably Monday, I’m going to take him to the vet. If all he needs is antibiotics, I’ll get them for him. If he needs any procedure/testing that can be done with up to $300, I’ll probably do it. If it’s any more than that, we’re going to have a really hard time doing that. If he has cancer anywhere, I feel like I have to put him down rather than wait, which is hard for me because he still has a lot of mostly good days.

All our money, such as it is, and all our energy, is tied up in just trying to get by day to day and taking care of our two little girls, one of whom has autism. We live in an unlivable apartment and have to move. The problem is, we’re a working-class family and we have had some rough things happen, and we have a huge debt to landlord (that shouldn’t be there but there’s nothing we can do about it) from two years ago. We live in NY where apartments are crazy expensive unless you live in the ‘hood (which we do now and no longer want to), and even the ‘hood is getting pricey. We also have a circumstance happening here that necessitates moving very quickly (long story and this is long enough), so we have to ask a landlord not to charge us 3 months of rent up front, to ignore the dog, and to ignore the credit rating and bad rental history, and hope we actually get a good landlord and not one who takes advantage of people like us and runs the place like a slum (that’s what we have now, and no thanks!) and I’m sure you can see how highly unlikely it is to find someone who will ignore all those things. I wish this wasn’t so, but I have to consider the practical value of taking the one thing I can change, the dog factor, out of the equation if he’s really just going to decline anyway, even if it’s a couple of years earlier than it would otherwise have to be. I love this dog. But I feel like it might be a choice between him and housing my children. If credit reports were not allowed to contain things that affect a person’s ability to obtain necessity of life things, like, oh, economy cars, non-luxury apartments and jobs, I would probably just keep treating whatever goes wrong with him until he just could no longer be repaired, but they do. I feel like I’m being backed into this. His quality of life is unlikely to improve. We just don’t have time and money to improve it. I suppose I want to know if I’m thinking wrongly or rightly about this, but please, be a human being about this. Don’t just say nasty things because you enjoy screwing with people. Nothing about this is easy or taken lightly.

Thanks for reading all of this if you actually did. It had to be that long if people were going to understand the situation.
RICHARD AND I CARE 4 U: Thank you both for your well-considered and kind responses. It means a lot to me.
WENK, what’s with slumlords is that they’re greedy as hell, even compared to other landlords, and that takes a load of doing. They want to do nothing and collect unreasonable sums of your money and will do it until someone sends them to jail or they drop dead.

Thank you for understanding and for your input. The thing is, we’ve had this boy for pretty near all his life. I found him when he was about six weeks old and he’s going to be 12 in December. He’s not healthy. I can’t imagine his being adoptable however sweet and wonderful he is. I also think that on a certain level, to take him from his family and throw him in with someone else at this point in his life is almost more cruel than putting him down, especially given that his health really isn’t great, and dogs you can always assume feel about 50% worse than they actually seem because they bear under it so well and don’t complain until every single breath is painful.

Any experience with lameness?

I have an 8 1/2 year old golden. He has been to the vet three times for a limping problem in his left front leg. Lyme disease was negative, but was on a cycle of dixycycline in case of false negative (test post cycle was negative). X-rays show no fractures, no tumors, no arthritis, etc. Vet examined by working the leg from paw to neck with no pain elicited. Started in winter by very very intermittently lifting paw during walks. I cleaned out snow, etc., examined at home and found no cuts, no scrapes, no burns, no foreign objects, etc. Cut back walks but limping progressed to noticeable limp when getting up or walking around, started epsom salt soak – no signs of infection and helped slightly with pain relief. This led to 1st vet visit and 10 days of rymadyl and restricted activity to leash walking at potty time. Improved back to very intermittent limping. Gave restricted activity time to work, but at end of 1 month, returned to same vet for same diagnosis (she said she took dog out and walked him around and saw no limp). Improved slightly with 7 days of rymadyl and leash walking. Gave 1 month for this, then took to new vet for entire new exam. Same diagnosis but no rymadyl as she thought aspirin would work on the inflammation in his big pad of paw. Big pad is still swollen. Will lift paw sometimes when water is sprayed directly on top of foot/wrist joint. He is in discomfort, I wouldn’t call it pain so much as he still attempts to be a puppy daily! But I won’t walk him until this issue has subsided and miss being able to work my dog in the activities he loves. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I think I am left with taking him to a specialist. Thanks for reading all of this.
No, I live in WI, we have deer ticks aroudn the area, which caused the Lyme test.

My dog is not feeling well and bit me on the nose really hard, what is going on?

I have a little Pom-Terrier (or should I say Terror), who is over eleven years old and not having a good day. It might be arthritis or maybe he cracked a tooth on a hard cookie (he has lost a tooth before and I have been soaking his cookies but he also has little carrots so?) Anyway, he was miserable and not eating or drinking but laying under a favorite dark spot until I gave him a children’s aspirin at noon and he took some milk and a small amount of milk and salmon mixture.Then he went under my bed and I couldn;t get him to come out for four hours. He finally came out slowly and I made the mistake of picking him up with soothing words and bringing him up to my face. He grabbed my nose in his mouth and bit down and twisted!!!! I let go as he was still freaking out. After icing my face, I left him alone for another hour and spoke to him soothingly trying to get him out so I could give him another asprin and take him out for a pee. He finally came out on his own, went outside with and peed and then I accidentally gave him my headache med instead of the children’s tylenol!!! He consumed a good half of an ultra strength headache relief pill acedomicin and caffine (!!!) (do I feel stupid!) and he is now in another hiding space.
1. Please give me insight into this biting.
2. He is perky now and feeling no pain.
3. he is probably only 20 lbs, is he going to be okay or should I watch for something?