I have a 6 month old Rotti, he has suddlenly this last 4 weeks become lame on his leg front leg, he walks with a limp.
We have had him to the vets for the last 4 weeks on antibiotics and he has just recently had x-rays taken, our vet couldn't find anything on the x-rays, his bones on his elbows & feet were all ok so nothing was broken, the vet referred us to a orthapedic vet for him to investigate further.
We went to the vet this afternoon and all he wanted to do was to cut his leg open and have a look inside as he may suspect cartlidge damage.
My Rotti is not in any pain what so ever and plays and fights with his sister.

It does sound like growing pains to me, if the vet has checked and xray and nothing has shown up, i would rest your rotti for 4 weeks and see what happens, that means no up and down stairs too.  There are alot of people on here that know more than me, i am sure they will be along here soon.  good luck

Nitro what are you feeding him?

I was feeding him Eukenuba but have just recently changed this last week to Snyeds working dog.

why do you ask that? could it be caused by wrong feeding?

If a dog is growing too quickly(or sometimes not enough) due usually to the wrong type of food,he will experience worse than normal growing pains.eg growing to quickly,brittle bones due to too much or not enough calcium,wrong cal/phos ratio's etc. etc.

I've never heard of snyeds??

I use snydes on mine and it is very good.

Could be panosteitis; rotties are pretty stoic and may not show pain........

what is that then,

Nitro - two links for you:

One for OCD - http://www.thepetcenter.com/xra/ocd.html

One for Panosteitis - http://www.vetinfo.com/dencyclopedia/depano.html

I thought Pano showed up on x-rays? It could possibly be OCD? Either problem would respond to the rest ayway, though some dogs with OCD may still need the surgery afterwards.

Anyway, I certainly err on the side of caution before having him operated on. I'd rest him for anywhere between 2 weeks and a month, depending on how he goes. And I mean rest - no jumping about or playing with his sister and short on the lead walks. I know it seems drastic, but you'd have to do that with him anyway if they do go ahead and open his leg up.

My Tibetan Mastiff puppy has had two bouts of growing pains and I just rested him for 2 weeks the first time (rear leg) and a couple of days the second time (shoulder) as he stopped limping. I gave him strict cage rest and four very short walks a day for 'potty' breaks. I also gave him glucosamine capsules for about 2 months the first time.

Hi Nitro,

I just wanted to respond to say that I am in exactly the same boat with my 5 and a half month old lab.  We took her to the vets twice, the first time they thought it was nothing to worry about and gave us a course of Rimadyl.  We took her back 10 days later- still limping and saw a different vet.  This one put the fear of god into me and I left in floods of tears thinking we might have to have Kiera operated on and her joint frozen....all this without an Xray, talk about scare mongering :(

I asked for advice on here and in the end out of desperation I called the breeder to ask her opinion.  She had kept Kiera's sister and she is also limping at the moment, in fact, she says it's really very common and it's just growing pains in her opinion and she isn't even worrying about it with her puppy as she's seen it in so many puppies before.  She suggested that we leave it for several weeks and just be sensible about exercise, diet, etc.  She said that she thought that vets are very quick to jump to the wrong conclusions - after all they benefit financially don't they?

Since speaking to Jenny I feel so much better and I'm not half as concerned as I was before.  We have noticed that the limp is getting better (it first presented about 6 weeks ago) and sometimes it moves from leg to leg - which I believe is a sign of growing pains.  In a few weeks time, if there is no improvement then we will take her for an Xray but not yet, I think it's possible to do more harm than good interfering with growing bones and joints - and it certainly isn't stopping her from tearing round the house like a loony!  In the meantime we've got her a Bioflow collar and she's been having fish oil and Synoquin supplement for quite some time now.

The vet did give us more antiinflammatories but we've opted not to use them - we don't want Kiera thinking that she's better if she isn't and doing herself some damage - also I've read about some bad side-affects on here so just be aware really.

I hope your boy is better soon - thought it would help to know you're not on your own.
Nicky x

Thanks for that reasurring message, we went to another vet last night and they advised us not to operate give him at least 5 months on a sensible diet and little exercise and not to use the stairs in anyway.

So here goes, see if this works.

Thank you