Pippen is owned by Sandy and Mark Hawkins of Weddington, North Carolina

Pippen…A Special Sheltie

By Sandra Hawkins

This is the story of Pippen, my five year old Sheltie who is handicapped. If my story keeps one other person from making the same mistake I made in choosing a puppy, it will please me very much.

I had decided that I wanted a dog…we had a nice family, a big yard, a couple of cats, but no dog. My sister-in-law’s dog had just given birth to bull dog pups but I knew they were prone to many health problems. I wanted a "healthy" dog. At that time, I didn’t know anything about purchasing a puppy but I thought the local pet shop was the logical place to start looking. I had always thought that shelties were adorable so set out to find one and find one I did. Pippen was ten weeks old and weighed only three pounds when I spotted him in his cage in the pet shop. He was cute and tiny so with no investigation, I took him home. After all, he did have AKC papers….wasn’t that all we really needed to assure us that he was healthy?

We named him Pippen after Scottie Pippen, the Chicago Bull’s basketball player. He may have gotten Scottie’s name but he was not to get Scottie’s legs. When Pippen was six months old he developed a limp. I took him to the vet but it didn’t seem to be anything major. It disappeared in about a week and I gave it no further thought. When he was not quite a year old, we left him in the care of my mother-in-law while we were away. When we returned, she said that she was sure that there was something very wrong with his legs and she gave us the number of a local orthopedic veterinarian. She was indeed correct. During the exam, the vet was quite certain that the problem was hip dysplasia. The x-ray confirmed it. Pippen handled his disability quite well at that point. He was put on an anti inflammatory drug and we started his physical therapy…swimming in our pool. He loved to swim and this combined with the medicine seemed to help him quite a bit….for a while.

Pippen was just about two when he started to have severe pain in his little legs and we took him back for a comparison x-ray. It showed that his hip dysplasia had greatly worsened over the year. Now we were faced with two options. One was to say good-bye forever to our little friend and put him to sleep, the other choice was major surgery. We opted for surgery and he had the first femoral head removed shortly after we made the decision. Our vet wanted to wait for about three months to do the second hip in order to strengthen the post-op side. Pippen was in such pain, however, the decision was made to go ahead with the second surgery within only a month. Our poor recovering invalid barely had "a leg to stand on" with both femoral heads removed but I was told that in time he would develop muscle around the end of the bones that would help support his weight. I had no idea how much pain Pippen would have to endure….there were many nights when I would hold him in my arms and walk the floor with him just as you would a sick child. He would finally fall asleep for a few hours only to waken and whimper with pain.

The only thing that seemed to comfort him was being held, so hold him I did…and hold him…and hold him…morning, noon and night. Seeing his agony, I wasn’t sure that our decision to have the surgery was the right one. I decided to give him a certain amount of time to heal but prepared myself for the possibility of euthanasia if he did not improve. He did improve, slowly but surely, but he was so clumsy that he slipped and tore a ligament in his knee and had to have it surgically repaired just three months after his hip surgery. The expense of this was unbelievable. We were looking at about three thousand dollars worth of surgery and he was only two and a half years old!

Pippen’s saving grace was the one thing that he loved most before his surgery, his swimming. He could hardly wait to get back in the pool and it proved to be the best physical therapy we could have found. Today, whenever we even think about getting a bathing suit on we had better be prepared to take Pippen swimming! He can even sniff a bathing suit out from under our clothing and gets very excited!

Pippen is now five years old and although he is free of pain, his walk clearly shows that he is handicapped. He cannot jump up or down so we lift him on and off of the bed, the couch, into the car or whatever. His front legs are bowed from trying to support the weight that his damaged hind legs can’t hold. In addition to his hip problems, he is under our veterinarian’s care for numerous types of skin problems which require special monthly injections and sometimes antibiotics. We are truly blessed to have found Pippen and to be able to care for him but what happened to us need not happen to every family who decides to buy a dog! Hip dysplasia, a serious genetic problem which affects many breeds, can be screened for in the parents before a breeding takes place. Affected dogs can then be neutered and eliminated from breeding programs.

Two years ago we bought a brother for Pippen, another Sheltie who was named Hunter. He was a five year old former show dog who needed a good home. We drove ten hours to get him and he is the best brother Pippen could ever have. They just love one another.

Recently, we purchased a three year old Sheltie from a lovely family who was forced to place him due to their child’s allergy problems. We flew from Florida to Tennessee to pick him up then rented a car and drove home through five states to deliver him to my daughter and her family. His sire is a tri color champion who is owned by Wildrose Shetland Sheepdogs of Tennessee. His dam is from a nationally known kennel who has bred competitive obedience shelties for many years. Both sire and dam have been certified free of hip dysplasia through the Orthopedic Foundation For Animals (OFA). Both have also been certified free of hereditary eye disease through the Canine Eye Registration Foundation (CERF). Our new sheltie friend is just a perfect little doll by the name of Dandy. When I tell people that we drove ten hours to get Hunter and flew across five states to pick up Dandy, they ask, "Isn’t that a lot of trouble to go to for a dog?" They obviously don’t know the story of Pippen….a very special little sheltie.