Two Special Rescue Dogs Need Spinal Surgery

My name is Alison and I adopt rescue dogs with extra behavioural needs because I’m a glutton for punishment! I currently have two very special little dogs who both carry a lot of trauma from their past, Sky (the pug) and Leonard (the dachshund). They are the absolute best of friends, completely joined at the hip and a perfect little duo. Theirs is the most genuine and deepest relationship I've ever known in dogs.

Through a huge stroke of bad luck, they both need spinal surgery at the same time. I've included all the info you could possibly want below, just click 'read more'.

They are insured, but Sky's surgery will be more than her cover. That's before we add all the associated costs like petrol, adapting the house, emergency vet visits etc.

Affording Sky's surgery and other medical needs was improbable when it was just her, but now that it's both of them it’s entirely impossible.

We are looking to raise the shortfall between Sky's insurance and the cost of the surgery, but literally any donation will be very very gratefully received. We have insurance for £8,000 and the top end of the quote for surgery is £15,500, meaning we need to find £7,500.

Every penny donated will go towards Sky and Lenny's vet care or ongoing needs (hydrotherapy, physiotherapy, etc). If we do, by some miracle, raise more than we need the excess will go to the PDSA.

I am happy to send both vet reports to anyone that would like to see them, but I have included all the information about them and their vet needs below for you so you know exactly what's going on.

Their adoption stories:

Sky came to me in 2019 after being dumped from a puppy farm. She was a breeding female and was in terrible condition. She has PTSD, she would only eat her meals on the patio outside with no humans around her and it took her 8 months of living in a safe place with me before she wagged her tail.

Now, she is a happy-go-lucky pug in the house that has no qualms about begging for food. She even has opinions about things, but is still very nervous outside and with people she doesn’t know well.

I adopted Lenny in 2021, but we have very little background for him. My old dog was often very ill and Sky could not tolerate not having another dog around. Lenny was a ball of fury, no one could enter the house, even people that lived in the house couldn’t move around without him barking like he’d never seen them before. He had so many triggers — the smoke alarm, the smell of hot oil, the sound of doors opening, people standing up from sitting/squatting, people carrying things etc etc.

I’d actually decided not to keep him due to the amount of work he would require, then Sky played with him. The only time she has ever played has been with Lenny, so of course he had to stay! They now live in each other's pockets and are so in love (but in a very platonic/familial way).

Several years of training, a house move, a behaviourist and a vet specialising in behavioural medicine and he’s now a genuinely great dog with only minor reactivity. The vets loved him during his recent stay and he didn't even come close to needing to be muzzled once.

Sky’s vet needs:

Diagnoses:

1. T12/T13 dorsal subarachnoid diverticulum and secondary mild cord oedema/gliosis and

cranial hydromyelia. A degree of constrictive myelopathy at the same level.

2. Hypoplasia of the caudal articular processes of T11 and T12.

3. Lumbosacral IVD protrusion.

4. Multifocal IVD degeneration.

Surgery option 1: £10,500. Surgical decompression of the identified compressive and suspected unstable areas. Carries a variable prognosis but has a good chance to achieve functional improvement by addressing the cause.

Surgery option 2: £13,500. Surgical decompression with the addition of spinal stabilisation with pedicle screws and rods with similar prognosis as decompression only. The main difference with the previous option it that this would attempt addressing local vertebral instability which is suspected to play a major role in the diverticulum formation and so help prevent reoccurrence.

Custom made surgical guides: £1,800. Not required, but reduces the risk of implant misplacement.

Background medical information: About 18 months ago I noticed something was off. I had that mumma sense that her back legs weren’t quite right, but the vet couldn’t find anything and I couldn’t point to one actual symptom. It was just a vibe. She deteriorated very slowly, then a few months ago it suddenly accelerated and she became wobbly and weak on her back end. She absolutely had numbness in her back legs and she also started struggling to squat to go to the toilet, and had some faecal incontinence.

We tried arthritis treatments just in case, but when that didn’t work she was referred to a neurologist. In the middle of May she went in for investigations. Turns out the neurologist had guessed exactly what was wrong just from looking at her.

There isn’t much data out there yet on the cause of this, as this is all very cutting edge, but there are a group of conditions common in pugs that they think all stem back to congenital malformation of the vertebrae.

Where vertebrae articulate against each other there are little knubs to stabilise the joint. Pugs are often born missing these knubs or they are too small to provide much stability. The theory is that when they're young it’s all fine (young dog muscle, tendon, spinal cord tissue etc keeps everything in check) but as they age and tissues get a bit more lax we get instability in the spine and this is what causes ‘pug myelopathy’ (a collection of different spinal cord problems that results in weak back ends).

On the top of her spine, right where her rib cage ends, she has a pocket of spinal fluid that’s bulged out and is pressing on her spinal cord (dorsal subarachnoid diverticulum). This is what the MRI image attached shows. She has two vertebrae where the knubs are too small to support her spine (just in front of where this bulge of spinal fluid has formed).

Where her lumbar spine and sacrum meet she has a bulging disc that’s also pressing on her spinal cord, and the discs of her spine are showing degenerative changes in multiple places (which, coincidentally, is exactly what’s going on in my back!)

She also has mild inflammation, fluid build up, the canal down the centre of her spinal cord has become enlarged and she has gliosis (which is how nerves/the brain/the spinal cord scar).

These things are causing constrictive myelopathy (squishing her spinal cord) and that’s causing the wobbly back end.

For now, she is steroids to reduce inflammation while I try to find the money for the surgery she needs. She is also going to hydrotherapy and to help with strengthening. Unfortunately these things can only ever buy us some time, she will continue to deteriorate and without surgery her back end will become completely paralysed eventually.

The important surgery will be to cut a ‘window’ in her vertebrae above where the pocket of spinal fluid is so it can bulge out away from her spinal cord rather than pressing on it. They would also remove some of the bulk of the fibrous tissues that have built up. This would (hopefully) alleviate her wobbly/weak back end.

However, due to the instability of the spine, the early data is suggesting that without also stabilising the spine (done by inserting pins) she will develop further spinal problems as she ages. The neurologist has said that they just don’t know yet what effect stabilising the spine has on further degenerative changes, as in proper data of percentages and risks and long term effects because the research is all so new. But anecdotally they’ve seen better outcomes with stabilisation surgery and it makes logical sense (to me anyway) that it would be beneficial. If we do go for stabilisation surgery too they would put pins into her spine to hold the weak joints stable. There are a couple of ways they can do it and they’d need to do further analysis of her spine to find out which one would be more suitable for her anatomy. They can do a 3D print of her spine from her CT scan so they can work it all out before they actually cut her open! But this costs a lot extra.

Obviously, any of these surgeries are complicated and invasive and carry pretty dire risks (even if the chances of the bad things happening are quite small).

The big point is that she is not in any pain. The vet found no signs of pain during his examinations of her and I have seen no signs that she is in pain at all either. Just the weakness/numbness and she does get tired. We have also caught it very early, often dogs are in a much much worse place than Sky by the time they make it to a neurologist, meaning her chances of a good outcome are vastly improved. But the longer we wait the more her chances of a good outcome fall. However, she’s ‘in great condition otherwise’ according to the vets, which also increases her chances of a good outcome as well.

I am happy to share the neurologist’s report with anyone that would like to see it.

Lenny’s vet needs

Diagnosis: IVDD. T12-T13 disc extrusion markedly compressing the spinal cord on the left side.

Surgery options: On 04/06/2025 Lenny underwent surgery to cut away part of two vertebrae to relieve pressure.

During surgery they found a large amount of chronic extruded disc material that had adhered (stuck) to his spinal cord. So he's had a 'slipped' disc for a while without showing signs. They managed to peel off the stuck disc material and they don't foresee it complicating his recovery.

More medical information: Two weeks before surgery, Lenny was a bit funny. Didn’t want to go up the stairs and was a bit stiff, we thought he’d strained muscle or something but couldn’t find anything.

A week before surgery, he suddenly showed signs of being in extreme pain. I rang my vet, because they’re open on a Sunday morning and they gave us an emergency appointment.

The vet couldn’t find anything wrong with him. She did all the tests for back and nerves and checked everything she could but found absolutely nothing. She’s sent us home with pardale (paracetamol and codeine), gabapentin, a check up appointment for later in the week and strict instructions that he had to rest.

The painkillers really helped. The night before the check up I didn’t give them to him so I could get a better idea of what his pain levels were. About 5 hours past when he would have had the painkillers I gave them to him because he was uncontrollably shaking and was so distressed.

At his check up he saw a different vet who also couldn’t find anything wrong with him. So by then two vets had done all the checks and come to the same conclusion. They took a urine sample (all normal) and his medication was switched to the gabapentin with metacam. The plan was to keep him on pain relief and strict rest and then we just see how he was. We all assumed that it would be one of those things that he’d slowly improve and we never actually know what happened.

Then a few days before surgery he was suddenly unable to walk. He could stand, but his posture was hunched and strange. I took him to the emergency vet (£350!) who did all the checks, and he had lost sensation from about L4. His pain relief was increased and he was referred to a specialist.

He stayed in hospital for about four days, then when he got home he was so so sad and sleepy. All he wanted to do was hide one of his crates and sleep. Since then he's been on strict crate rest and has improved so much, he can walk well with very minimal stumbling/tripping/staggering. Everyone is very pleased with him. He has physiotherapy exercises to do, and he can start having short lead walks soon. I may have to sedate him first though, because he LOVES going out and about and he's going to be so overexcited!

I am happy to share both the neurologist’s report and the physiotherapist's reports with anyone that would like to see them.