Frenchie neck pain - always get 2nd opinion

Frankie at a glance

• Dog: Male French bulldog mix, a rescue, about 3 and a half years old, usually about 33 lb.
• Diagnosis: IVDD in his neck (cervical spine), pointed to by an x-ray. Nothing in his back. No MRI.
• Neurologic status: Never paralyzed. Bladder and bowel normal. Deep pain was never tested, because he was in too much pain to be handled.
• Treatment path: Conservative care, no surgery. A second vet changed his pain plan and added acupuncture.
• Rest: About 10 weeks in a playpen.
• Home: Four dogs, two rescues and two forever fosters, kept in separate groups.
• At this update: In Anja's words, "1000% healed."

Timeline

1. Meet Frankie

Frankie and Bella came into Anja's life about three years ago. Frankie was saved by a rescue called Bailing Out Bentley, which pulled more than 30 dogs from a breeding warehouse in Compton, California.

"He had never seen a car. He had never seen a person," she says. "He was just so overwhelmed by everything, and that kind of stayed with him."

He and Bella are inseparable, except for the weeks he spent sick in his pen with IVDD.

"He's crazy. He's fun." On walks he fixates on something and stares into space, and the neighbors laugh: there's Frankie.

2. Signs nobody connected

From the time she got him, Frankie would sometimes put his chin on the ground after eating in the morning and let out a weird little scream, a couple of times a week. He had a history of chin infections, so Anja thought it was that. "I never realized it could even be IVDD," she says.

He was also losing weight, two or three pounds a month, down to about 26 lb. It made no sense to her, because "Frankie was eating like a pig."

Looking back, she wonders whether pain was behind it. "Animals hide pain very well," she says. "It could go on for a while without people noticing."

3. From a first visit to an x-ray

Then, around mid-July, came a different scream. "It wasn't like the Frankie stubbed his toe scream." Anja took him in. His blood work came back normal, and he went home without a diagnosis.

About six days later, Anja woke up to Frankie screaming in the middle of the night. At an emergency visit, an x-ray pointed to IVDD in his neck. The vet recommended a neurologist and an MRI.

Anja said "NO" to surgery. "The spine surgery just sounded like the worst possible thing to put a dog through," she says. "That's just my own opinion. I know not everybody holds that opinion." The vet did not push, and they went home with heavy medication.

Her "NO" was personal. Anja lost her soul dog, Bentley, an 11 year old French bulldog she had rescued, when his heart stopped as he went under anesthesia for BOAS surgery (brachycephalic airway surgery, the breathing surgery for flat-faced dogs). "The hardest part was that I was unprepared that it could happen. I thought I was helping him." Frankie was still young, but after losing Bentley, surgery was a hard "NO" for her.

Later, her new vet told her Frankie would not have been a good surgical candidate, with about a 50% chance of recovery, and that she "might have been right to trust your gut." A month in, the new vet also advised against sedating him for an MRI while he was in that much pain.

4. The worst weeks

The first couple of weeks, Anja could not get his meds right. Every time Frankie turned he screamed and eventually learned not to do it at all.

He was on gabapentin, methocarbamol, and prednisone, which he was already taking for a skin issue. Tramadol was added for pain. "It just made him stoned, and I don't think it helped with the pain," she says. Some days she could not get his mouth open for his meds, and she fed him by hand.

Frankie needed medicine in his system around the clock: something every four hours, day and night, with a little food each time. Anja set a timer all night long.

One scared Saturday night, the online vet she has used for years helped her adjust his pain meds, which made a real difference.

5. A new vet and acupuncture

About three weeks in, Anja took Frankie to a different vet. They replaced the tramadol with amantadine, and within about two days his pain was better. They also started acupuncture, done by the vet herself.

The first time, Anja could barely get him into the car because he couldn't move his neck. After that first session, "he tried to jump in the car."

They did acupuncture weekly for four weeks, then every two weeks, then a month apart. Anja remembers the vet telling her Frankie had been the worst pain she had ever seen. By the last visit he ran in and tried to jump all over her. As Anja remembers it, the vet credited the acupuncture together with the heavy meds.

6. A pen, a mattress, and four dogs

A crate did not work. Anja could not pick Frankie up or get him in and out of one. So she set up a baby gate style playpen with a bed inside, big enough for her to climb in and sit with him.

He didn't fight it. He would walk out to the side patio to pee and walk right back to bed.

Anja moved her mattress to the living room floor and slept beside his pen in case he moved in the night.

Frankie's best friend, Bella, spent those weeks like an only dog. One of Anja's other dogs, who can't be around the others usually, just walked past the pen without barking. "Nobody messed with him," Anja says.

See playpens for crate rest and crate rest with more than one dog.

7. Frankie today

At about eight weeks, Frankie really turned a corner.

By the middle of October, he was running and jumping over the other dogs. He uses pet stairs to get up on the bed. They do two slow walks a day. "We're just doing everything really slow."

Anja now tells other owners in IVDD groups who are in the thick of it:

Anja cares for Frankie, Bella and her other rescues and fosters through her sanctuary, Belly Dancers for Bulldogs. Dancers donate costumes, and she sells them to raise money for the bulldogs.