My IW Tori had bilateral elbow dysplasia and had surgery at I think about 7 months to remove th huge joint “rats” as we called them, because they were bigger than joint mice. She did well after the surgery, and did well with the rehab- we did lots of that including swimming. She ended up fairly sound, although always had restricted range of motion in front, so she could not do the double suspension gallop which is typical for the breed, but she could gallop pretty fast. She could not jump very well, but well enough to do stairs pretty easily and could jump onto a high bed ( human bed!).
She was on joint supplements and meloxicam every day of her life, but tolerated that well. She did have one bout of septic arthritis in an elbow which was very painful (extremely high fever), but she recovered from that. Laser treatments seemed to help her quite a bit.
I just lost her recently to osteosarcoma in the distal radius at age seven.
I bred her (I mean produced her, she herself was never bred). Her dam had xrayed clear of elbow dysplasia, but her sire has one elbow that to the surprise of the xraying vet because he thought it looked fine, did not pass OFA. This male has sired numerous litters (nine litters, 59 offspring) and Tori was the only one who ever had clinical symptoms. Now though, I am very aware of this issue in our breed- (about 12% are affected with elbow dysplasia although hip dysplasia is extremely rare), and I have not allowed her brother to be used, although people wanted to even though they knew it was an issue. This is a breed with a very small gene pool and many other serious health issues- cardiac problems, bloat, pneumonia, cancer (especially osteosarcoma, lymphoma, and hemangiosarcoma).
Tori’s dam and her litter sister have both won our National Specialty- the only mother-daughter to have ever have done so- so it hasn’t been easy to keep people from using Tori’s brother- I co-own him- but when I explain all I have been through with Tori it does have an impact. The brother was Winner’s Dog at the National one year and Award of Merit last year so it is not an easy thing.
It did limit what we could do- we got a CD but could not go on to Open as I wouldn’t have wanted her to jump even the Preferred height jump. We did quite a bit of training for Tracking but even this became uncomfortable for her, with the head-down posture for a very tall dog- a shorter dog could have probably done it and been fine.
Anyway I think the surgery is your only choice for pain control. I think the rehab and continuing care is very important.
the limp isn’t terrible, but he has no life at this point because if I push his activity level at all he is sore in the evenings. So we leash walk out to the bathroom and he’s a house dog. The orthopedic surgeon is recommending surgery ASAP to remove the loose fragments in his elbow because he says they cause a lot of joint degeneration the longer they stay. I am thinking it is worth trying the surgery. The surgeon says it helps 80-85% of dogs with this condition, but that there will be lifelong arthritis with or without surgery and surgery will just delay and lessen the degree. His lameness has getting better since the initial onset, but it’s never gone away. And as a horse person, I noticed even before he started limping that he always points that paw.