My last post was about the situation with Mini. As I posted, she had started to show the signs of weakness in her hind legs. With a history of completely losing use of her back legs last year, this was scary and heart breaking to see.
As I explained in the last post, we are left without access to the vet at this point. We have had no choice but to try to handle this on our own.
We are still keeping Mini in a small area, not allowing her to jump, or walk on slick floors or stairs. So far, she has not gotten any worse. She may be showing signs of being a little more stable on her back legs. It’s just one of those things we are being very cautious with and taking slowly.
Mini also has another issue that I may have not mentioned before. She has a very bad problem with itching. This is so bad that she keeps going through periods where she has the red, itchy hot spots in various areas of her body and a lot of problem with hair loss due to scratching. This is not a new problem, it has been an ongoing problem for her.
We have tried so many things to help her. We have tried different foods. Various shampoos that are suppose to help this problem, have not made a difference. She sleeps on my daughter’s bed at night so I know that her bedding is kept very clean. The cone collars (that some refer to as the “cone of shame”) only prevent her from reaching a small area of her body with her mouth and keeps her from scratching her head with her paws, but she still can scratch parts of her body. She is never really left completely alone. We all try to keep her from scratching. If she wanders off into a room no one is in, she goes crazy scratching and we lose ground on the skin problem. No, she does not have fleas.
Sometimes her skin problem gets slightly better and hair that she has lost will start to grow back. But, then she cycles right back into scratching enough that the hair is lost again. The scratching seems to lead to her itching more and the more she itches, the more she wants to scratch; it is a vicious cycle.
At the time she started showing signs of the leg weakness returning, the skin problem also had been flaring up really bad for awhile. Inflammation was the issue with her legs last year. Obviously, she has inflammation on her skin from the scratching and licking. I keep wondering, if we could get control of what causes the outward (skin) inflammation if that would allow other inflammation inside her body (to do with the issue with her legs) would also be solved. Since we are keeping her confined to a small area and someone is trying to stay with her every minute of the day and night, I am hoping we can get ahead of the scratching so that her skin can heal up and her hair can all regrow in the patches were she has lost it. Right now, she isn’t able to wander off around the house, out of sight and start scratching. We have also started to switch her to a different food. We haven’t tried this one and I am hoping it will help her with the itching problem.
As of right now, Mini’s leg problem has not gotten worse but we are still monitoring the situation and her skin and scratching problem is an ongoing battle. Through it all, Mini remains happy and spoiled.