Andy has Panosteitis: A couple weeks ago Andy, AKA: RatByte, our 7 month old Mini-Schnauzer started limping, favoring his right front paw. Nothing showed up other than a little tenderness when examined both by us and the Vet. So we went to NAB and boarded Andy and his big brother "Teddy," with our Vet for about 4 days. He came home fine and when he started his normal at home urban terrorist run of the house, he started limping and favoring his right hind paw. Next day I called the Vet and we decided to X-ray the little monster to see if he'd broken anything. Yesterday Andy spent most of the day getting X-rayed while I rested. Our Vet is a pretty good guy, sharp, Cornell graduate and puts up with a lot of our questions finally called about 4 PM to come up and asked if there was anything missing in Andy's history. Nothing other than the Tech's had forgotten to mention enough to the doctor, in order to X-ray his hips at the same time-- So back in the exam room for another round of X-rays. (We ended up with enough X-rays to create another dog, if we could add the fur.)
Diagnoses: Panosteitis. Pano Also known as "Wandering Lame Disease," "Puppy Limp" is best described a condition is similar to growing pains in children, but normally found in large dogs, like German Shepherds (Andy's a Mini-Schnauzer, so much for that,) between the ages of 6-18 months of age, and normally more in males. This disease happens because Andy's not growing at an even rate, so he's having problems with his bone density and this causes a painful inflammation . Despite the bad news, we now know why he's limping and the treatment is to give him a manditory rest (not easy with a Schnauzer that does zero-50 mph in 4.2 seconds,) and put him on some pain meds in order to help him rest the next couple weeks. The good news is he will probably grow out of it as easily as he grew into it. At this point I'm not an expert on it, but I'm sure learning a lot.
3:31:16 PM 
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