Attacking of foot aggressively HELP PLEASE

[Ollie eaton]

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Hi guys just wanted some advice

We have a rescue dog from Romania and we have had her from 3 months of age , where we had a snapped tail , and was not in the best health but she is now 2 years of age and doing good but since we have had he she has attacked her left foot aggressively about 20-30 times a day and she gets really stressed by this and she has had 9 xrays , MRI and seen by 2 specialists and still nothing to help the problem I have videos and that’s to help if needed thanks again
Ollie

 

[merlina]

Well done you for taking her- these dogs can be a challenge. If your vet is unable to find a medical reason- just wondered have you asked about hotspots? - if not it could be to do with past trauma. If she has been confined for a long time and stressed she may have got into the habit of inflicting pain on herself as a sort of release- the way children will self-harm or head bang. It gives a stimulus that helps them cope with the intolerable. Can you distract her? Can you identify any situation that brings it on? I've seen collies confined in farm buildings etc become shadow chasers for the same reason. Good luck with her.

 

[Ollie eaton]

Hi thanks for the reply

anything sets her off , she can be fast asleep , eating , walking anything , it’s like she goes into a different world and then snaps out of it , which when she does do it it lasts about 20-30 seconds and then sprints around the house after like she is stressed and uncomfortable thanks

 

[eingana]

I'm afraid that I probably understand better than most people what this may be. One of the things that you very rarely hear mentioned when it comes to nerve damage is the itch. There are painkillers to take the edge off the burning sensations, shooting pains and aches, but nobody tells you how much the itch is going to truly drive you up the wall.

OK, relate to this human example. My right arm has nerve damage, caused in my case by surgery to remove a tumour from wrapped around the nerves to my right arm in my shoulder. I've got bits of my arm that are truly dead to the touch, bits that are over sensitive, bits that I know where I'm touching but I feel the sensation somewhere else entirely. If you stroke one of those bits it makes me feel a bit sick because I can see where I feel it and I know damned well that nothing is touching it!

The damaged nerves ache, they cause shooting pains and burning sensations, and I take a painkiller. The itch, on the other hand, officially has no solution. I know where the itch is, it's in one of the truly dead bits. These bits are dead to the point that when I was wearing dressings they would just sew the dressings to me because I was allergic to the adhesive, and I didn't feel a thing. When I touch them it feels like someone else- I have literally no sensation.

So I know where the itch is, and I reach that point and scratch it, but I can't feel the scratch and the itch continues for hour after hour after hour. Have you any idea how frustrating that is? I've got a whole load of understanding and learning, and I know that the placebo effect works even when you know that it's a placebo, so my palliative care consultant told me that some very inexpensive antihistamines work to reduce the itches and I decided to believe him. Whether it actually does is irrelevant because I've decided to believe that it will help my itch so when the itch takes hold I take an antihistamine and feel better.

If your little one had a broken tail then she may well have had some impact damage on her back end, and the damage necessary to bring on phantom pains and itches can be so subtle that it's not visible in scans or x-rays. If her foot is giving her sudden stabbing pains, or an itch that is driving her up the wall, then it's not hard to understand why she's biting at her foot, is it?

Another possibility is the intense pain brought on by nerve reconnections. When a nerve ending reconnects it's like being stung by a wasp repeatedly on a small part of your skin and it can go on intermittently for a couple of days before fading (and being replaced by a new one, if you're really unlucky).

I'm sorry that I don't have a solution for you. It's possible that antihistamines do actually work, good old cetirizine, but it's also possible that them working for me is entirely placebo effect. If she trusts you to apply an ice pack or give her foot a squeeze to suppress whatever is overreacting then those are always worth a try, and so is seeing if she will let you have a scratch where she's biting. It's also possible that you can distract her from this by training with something tasty or a game. When my itch is particularly bad I try to find something to occupy my brain and if it's sufficiently engaging I may go a while without thinking about the itch.

 

[JudyN]

Another possibility is that this could be an OCD behaviour. It sounds very similar to my friend's rescue, who would suddenly, out of nowhere, start whirling round snapping at his rear end. This dog had spent the first 6 years of his life on a chain, and the vet's theory is that he's having flashbacks to when rats would attack him

She could usually snap him out of it by holding him tightly to her body (he's only small), but obviously you don't want to do this if your dog might bite you. He was also put on a drug - the equivalent of Prozac, I think - which helped a lot. So you might want to have a word with your vet about te possiblility of medication - he's still a very lively lad, it doesn't sedate him in any way.

 

[lurcherman]

These foreign dogs must have been through hell, I’ve seen a few and they do seem stressed and have issues, I like a challenge but I wouldn’t be taking one in, wish you the best of luck.