Hi,

My 18 month lab was diagnosed with 'mild' OCD 6 months ago, after noticing a slight but persistant limp.  It was found to be in his wrist joint.

Anyway, after about 4 weeks of minimal exercise I began building it up, reducing the metacam and starting him on fish body oil, green lipped mussel and vitamin c.  On average he was having about 2hrs of walks a day, a lot of which was chasing his best friend around in the woods.  Our vet advised that as long as he was not limping after exercise, it was not doing him any harm.

On xmas day he started limping again which I am devastated about.  It seems worse than last time (but it's possible that I'm forgetting what it was like previously), so he is on metacam again :rolleyes:  The difference this time is that he is more limpy after waking up than after a walk - so I don't know what to do!!  The vet had said that it was not severe enough for surgery, and he also avoids surgery wherever possible for OCD as he believes the operation itself causes arthritis.  But now I'm wondering if we've gone and made things worse for poor Dexter, and surgery may have sorted things out. 

So - my question is - does anyone have any long term experience of OCD with or without surgical intervention?  If so how did the condition progress?  Were there any lasting signs?  I'm hoping to go to the vets again tomorrow (seem to be spending all my time there - pup's had a very persistant Giardia infection!!), but I'd like some different views to put to him.

Thanks
~Clare

Hi Clare.
I would be inclined to have further X rays to determine the extent of the damage now.  The joint "mice" that break off can occur at any time and cause more problems.  I know a Lab that had OCD in her stifle and was operated on at 2yrs, she was fine afterwards, no lameness but had lead exercise for the main part thereafter, she lived to 13.
Dawn.

Hi Clare, my IW boy has had both shoulders operated on for OCD. The orthopaedic specialist who operated him did say that arthritis may occur when he is old, but then it would with untreated OCD anyway. At present, 3 years after surgery, he is great and has not had a lmip or any sign of pain since a few days after the ops.

If I were you. I'd ask for a referral to a specialist orthopaedic vet. I don't know about OCD wrist but in the shoulders plain X-rays, which are all most general practice vets can do, don't tell the whole story. My boy's shoulders didn't look too bad on straight X-ray but the flaps were very obvious when an X-ray was done with contrast medium, and I was told they looked even worse on athroscopy.