looking for real owner perspective on IVDD prevention setup at home, our 18 month old standard dachshund had her first weird back day this week and im trying to figure out which of the 9 things the internet recommends are actually worth doing
Pickle is 18 months, standard wirehaired dachshund, currently about 19lbs and our vet says ideal weight for her frame is closer to 17. she has been completely normal, no symptoms ever, until tuesday when she jumped down off the couch like she has done a thousand times and yelped and went stiff for maybe two minutes. she walked it off, ate dinner normally, slept normally, totally fine since. but the yelp scared us into actually taking IVDD seriously instead of vaguely knowing its a thing.
we went to the vet wednesday, she did a full neuro check and said pickle is clinically normal right now with no signs of disc disease, but that the tuesday incident is the kind of "first signal" the breed sometimes gives and we should "tighten up our back protective routine going forward." which is great advice in concept but she did not give us a specific list and now im reading the internet at 1am which is its own kind of problem.
the list of things the various dachshund forums and rescue groups recommend includes, in roughly the order i keep seeing them, a couch ramp, no stairs ever, a body support harness instead of a regular harness, picking her up with two hands under the belly and never under the front legs, no jumping off furniture, no rough play with our other dog, weight management down to ideal, no high impact exercise like long ball chasing, and a few people on instagram have mentioned doggy pilates which i think might be a joke but im not sure. doing ALL of these would basically mean a different dog living a different life, and the cost in furniture changes and gear and routine rebuilding adds up fast.
what im actually trying to figure out is what is the 80/20 here. for the dachshund families who have been doing this for years, which of those interventions actually moved the needle for your dog and which were paranoia tax? did you do everything from day one and your dog stayed healthy, or did you do a subset and that worked too? is there a single intervention that is way more important than the others, or is it more of a stack? would really love the version of this that isnt the rescue group blog post version
Loading comments...