Hello everybody, my name is Saskia, i live in the Netherlands together with my husband and son and we have a beautifull dog named Puck. We know that his mother is a short-hair Estrela and we suspect that his father is a Gado de Transmontano. We do not know who the father is because Puck was a kind of surprise puppy. We got him trough a family who got the motherdog from Portugal as an adoption and after some weeks they found out she was pregnant. Puck weighs about 70 kilos and is twice as big as our former Estrela Inno. Inno lived with us for two and a half years, he died of a enlarged heart. We got Inno as a puppy from the Hienderheuvel, they took very good care of the mother and father dog, they tested them for the hips, elbows and heart before they decided to breed, but despite this our Inno suffered from DCM. So after Inno died we knew that the Estrela is a very special dog and that in the future we would like a pall like Inno again. But it had to be a dog who was in need of a family. So after a month we heared that an adoption dog was pregnant and that the family could not take care of the puppys so we went to look, only to look.... Well that evening a little puppy was lying next to me ;) Offcourse this is a risk you dont know who the father is, you dont know the bloodline you dont know nothing about health and dna so we decided to take him to the vet the next day for a health check, also because he was about twelve weeks and did not get any shots yet. He was suffering from worms so the vet gave us a special schedule for his health and everything went well. But after 7 months he grew stiff, he walked funny and it looked he was in pain, so to the vet again and they suspected hipproblems, but because of his age they did not want to make an x-ray yet. We got painkillers and the advice to start physiotherapy and hydrotherapy. So that is wat we did and now after one and a half years, Puck is doing well. Offcourse we have to manage his walking but he can walk up to 20 minutes and this 4 times a day. We got exercises and a way to massage the hip. In the beginning we went every week and now we go once a month. Puck gets a massage from the hips and backbone for half an hour on a special pillow with magnets, this is well known amongst horses and backproblems, they call it the centurion pillow. And he goes in a little swimmingpool with a treadmill to exercise the muscles around the hips but without gravity so you will not damage the hip. And at home we give him massages and exercise to make the muscle strong. Puck has a lot of energy so at home we do a lot of dogbraintrain games with him, he likes to search so that is the story of Puck. We do go to the vet regurlaly also to check his heart but his heartbeat is so calm and he is doing so well that further test are not needed yet. Our vet is also an orthopedic surgian for larger dogs and knows about the problems with Estrelas. Puck is getting special dryfood for boneproblems and we do give him fresh meat, his weight is perfect so we hope he will grow old in good health.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 16:32:56 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015