Health & Medical

The morning my dog's back legs simply stopped working, I thought he'd slipped. He stood, the front half normal, the back half folded, and he looked at me like the floor had betrayed him. I reached to steady him and he didn't get up. Not a slip. A spinal stroke, the vet called it later, fibrocartilaginous embolism, FCE, and the plain word for it is a clot of disc material that finds the spinal cord and shuts a section down.

It happens fast. One minute he's walking, the next his hind end is dead weight. No warning, no fall, no cry, just the legs quitting. I'd braced for a car, a fight, a fall from the stairs. Nobody braced me for "the disc material decided to travel," which sounds like a joke and is the grimmest lottery in the breed.

What the clinic does

The vet felt his spine, watched him drag, and sent us for the scan to rule out a slipped disc that needed surgery. The image showed the embolism, a small block in the cord, not a disc out of place, and the news was strange: no operation, because you can't unclot a spinal stroke, but the cord often re-routes around it. The back legs might come back. They might not. The first seventy-two hours, the vet said, tell you most of what you'll get.

We went home with a plan, not a cure. Keep him clean, turn him so he doesn't sores, bladder expression if he can't go, and physio from day one: bicycle the legs, stand him in a sling, let the nerves remember there's a floor. The sling was a towel at first, then a proper support, and the first time his toe twitched on day three, I cheered like he'd won something.

It's slow. Weeks, not days. Some dogs walk again, some don't, and the breed and the spot decide more than the vet does. Big dogs do worse than small, thoracolumbar worse than neck. Mine was mid-back, mid-size, and we were in the maybe group, which is the cruellest group because it makes you hope out loud.

What I'd tell you

If the back legs go suddenly and there was no accident, don't wait. The window for the cord to re-route is now, and the clinic that scans today beats the one you call tomorrow. Keep him off the legs so he doesn't damage what feeling he's got left, and start the moving early, because a still dog stiffens and a stiff dog forgets.

The rehab was the job that kept me sane. Twice a day I stood him in the sling and walked him, his toes dragging, until the toes started to catch. Then they stepped. Then they bore weight for a second. We counted seconds like they were miles. The hydrotherapy pool came later, and the first time he paddled his own back legs in the water, the therapist cried, which told me how far we'd come without my noticing.

Mine took six weeks to stand and ten to walk a crooked lap of the garden. He'll never sprint. He doesn't seem to mind. The clot took a section of cord and the dog took it back one toe at a time, and the morning he walked to the door on his own, I remembered the floor had never betrayed him. His own body had, and then it'd taken it back.

The physio taught me more about the dog than the scan did. Watching the toes catch, then step, then bear weight, I learned patience as a muscle, his and mine, and the day he walked the crooked lap of the garden I realised the maybe group had become the yes group while I was counting seconds. The clot took a section of cord; the work gave most of it back.

If your dog's back legs go suddenly, scan today, move today, hope out loud, because the cord re-routes for the owners who show up with a towel and a plan. The floor never betrayed him. The body did, and then, slowly, kindly, took it back, one toe at a time, in a garden he'd always known how to cross.

The scar from that morning is only mine. The dog carries none of it, just a wobble and a story he doesn't know he's in. He walks the crooked lap now without the sling, stops at the step, looks back to check I'm coming, and goes on, and the checking back is the part that tells me the nerves found their way home. A spinal stroke is a sentence with a question mark, and the answer, for us, arrived one toe at a time, in a garden, on a lead I'll hold for as long as he needs it. The body gave it back. I'm just the one who carried the towel.