Sudden Ataxia after neck pain

    Hi great dane community.  Long post coming up- Our 5 and a half year old Great Dane boy has been fit and healthy up to date, with no major issues, other than once breaking his toe and once he rolled off our bed and hurt his neck, where he recovered within 3 days after seeing the vet. The issues started about 3 weeks ago after he had his annual rabies booster inoculation, we noticed that every so often if he moved his neck strangely or jumped, he would yelp. We weren't too concerned as this happened previously after having an injection, we thought it could be inflammation in the neck at injection site and he was just tender, after 2 or 3 days he generally recovers. About 12 days ago, we took him for his Saturday morning walk. He left home walking/moving perfectly fine with no signs of discomfort or pain. About 12mins into the walk he showed signs that he was in serious pain and it seemed as if he had "pinched" a nerve in his neck and started to limp, not ataxia, a painful limp with yelps in between. We rushed him to the vet, they gave him a tramadol injection as well as mexidol oral suspension anti inflammatory (which we are still giving him daily). After his pain subsided, once the tramadol set in, he developed a strange walk, ataxia like gait, clinically showing wobblers syndrome. Two days later he went for Xrays of his neck and the Vet said that she was happy with his vertebrae and that there were no signs of abnormalies in the bone. After a 3 or 4 days at home, with good rest, he improved so much that he was almost 100% normal. His gait went back to normal!? ... Until yesterday... he managed to sneak past us and he ran outside to bark at the neighbors dogs. He has since degenerated again and has developed this "wobblers" walk again. He has lost coordination of this hind legs and has the typical floating front paws and lowered head walk again. I find this so scary as he was was perfectly healthy dane, with zero signs of wobblers in 5 and a half years, to this. Has anybody experienced something similar? We are taking him back for a check up tomorrow.

Hello!  Dogs can develop cervical spondylomyelopathy - wobblers - at any age.   My understanding is that cases are nearly always progressive, rather than going readily from symptomatic to normal as you describe.  You could ask your vet or - if they are unsure, a specialist - to confirm that.  Sometimes, the cervical vertebrae and vertebral canal can look completely normal on radiography but may not be.  For example, the soft-tissue discs (which do not show on x-ray) or a lump of some kind could still protrude across the path of the spinal cord.  Therefore, plain radiographs are useful when they are positive but do not prove that nothing is pushing on the spinal cord in that area when negative.  Your vet, however, will have performed some level of neurological exam, probably on both occasions, to assess the function of certain nerves.  If they were suspicious of wobblers from this, I would expect them to have made this clear and suggested more investigations e.g. a myelogram or MRI.  If they have not, it could be that they were happy from the clinical exam / improvements that this was unlikely to be the diagnosis.  However, please note that I know comparatively little about the case and the best way to understand what happened would have been to ask the vets directly and we would advise getting in touch with them if you still have concerns.

Thank you Dr Buchanan. We will be seeing the vet tomorrow.  Will most likely have to go for an Mri to get to the bottom of this. We were so suprised by how quickly he recovered from not able to stand up by himself, to normal in a matter of 4 days.  And then today he looks bad again. Thanks for the advice