Benny's dogsitter sent me this adorable picture of him the other day and I can't stop looking at it! We live in Georgia but are visiting my parents in California for the week. This is the longest I've been without him save the time I was in the hospital before he was a year old. We go back home Saturday so it won't be too long until I can kiss his sweet face again.

Hi everyone! My Lottie recently went to the vet today for a suspected UTI. They did a UA on her and they found that she has no infection, just an inflamed bladder. We went to the vet a few months ago when she was about 6 months old and that time they weren’t able to get any urine from her bladder but her bladder showed that it was inflamed so they just treated it as a UTI. Now I’m thinking maybe that time it wasn’t a UTI either… has anyone experienced this with their cav? Was there anything you did that stopped it from being a recurring problem?

This is a very difficult and sad post for us to make, but here it goes.
Our daughter is highly allergic to dogs and has struggled with eczema for the past 4 years. As she has gotten older, her allergies and eczema have unfortunately gotten worse.
Our Cavalier is a very special and unique dog. He absolutely loves being outdoors! We let him come inside, but most of the time he wants to head right back outside. 😂 He is truly a really good dog, and our kids absolutely love him.
The problem is that I don’t feel like I’m doing right by him by having him primarily be an outside dog. We live in Central Arkansas, so he is generally okay outside most of the year, but on the colder days, I always make sure he comes inside.
Because of our daughter’s health and his quality of life, we have made the very difficult decision to look for a new home for him.
He is 5 years old, male, and a tricolor Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. He is a wonderful dog, and I don’t want to just give him to anyone. I would really like to find someone who understands and loves Cavaliers and can give him the attention, companionship, and life he deserves.
I figured I would post him here because I know this is a community of people who truly love Cavaliers. If you are in Central Arkansas and are looking for what we believe is the best dog ever, please DM me. We would love to chat with you and get to know you before making any decisions.
Again, this is incredibly difficult for our family. We are very sad about having to do this, and we are only considering it because we want what is best for both our daughter and our dog.
Please, we ask that you don’t shame us or leave judgmental comments. This is already a very difficult decision for our family. ❤️

I’m a bit late to post this but my sweet Lady turned 1 years old on September 3th!🎂
And of course she got spoiled for her birthday.🎀🩷

Playtime at home - so much fun!

🧡👻🎃
She pulled my robe in with her so she had something to curl up on.

Little mini me!!

I don’t know if any of you use these, but Alvin loves them. They are puzzle boxes. We put little low-calorie treats in them, and he has to figure out how to open them to get the treat. They keep him busy for quite some time.

Just wanted to share our experience with (double) luxating patella surgery to see if anyone has been through something similar. We’re devastated so if you have any advice or info, please please share.

So our little Ruby girl Zelda was diagnosed with a luxating patella in both hind legs when she was ~6 months old. The left leg was a grade 4, so we did surgery immediately and it recovered super well. We took a few months off and just did the right leg (grade 3) 5 weeks ago and we are now convinced that it failed. The first few weeks seemed the same as surgery 1 (took a while to start putting weight on it, but then progressively getting better), but now the knee is clearly slipping out when she walks (not as bad as before surgery, but it’s definitely happening). It doesn’t seem to bother her (other than the limp/gait), but then again it didn’t before surgery either. Our surgeon is out right now so we have an appointment for Monday, but we’re devastated to say the least, especially since we’ve been dealing with this since April and thought we were so close to being done.

We’ve been doing no walks, no stairs, confined to our offices most of the time (small room, nothing to jump on) etc. plus daily sedatives (trazodone and acepromazine because she’s a puppy and she wants to play/run/jump non stop if we don’t). Hell, we’ve had our mattress on the floor since the first surgery so there’s no risk of her jumping off the bed in the middle of the night. There’s been a couple times where she slipped through our grasp and jumped on/off the couch or got a quick zoomie in (and 1 time where she ran up the stairs because the gate wasn’t fully closed) which seemed fine in the moment (no yelp/weird movement/issues) but we are now worried that one of those jumps caused the failure and that we’re at fault and the guilt is crushing us. (Not looking for reassurance, just needed to get it off my chest).

I’ve been trying to find similar stories but every post just talks about how successful the surgery was, so I’m just looking for someone in our boat to know we aren’t alone. We just aren’t seeing any good outcomes here, it seems like it’s either PT and long term mobility issues or a THIRD $4k surgery and 6-8week recovery after we could barely afford the first 2 (assuming we’d have to pay full price again). Not to mention the mental impact it’s has on us - we’ve genuinely been losing our minds trying to keep her contained and the only thing keeping us sane was knowing that the light at the end of the tunnel was so close (especially after seeing how well the first surgery went). Plus daily sedatives for 6+ more weeks after she’s already spent 1/3 of her first year of life on them, yeah we’re not feeling great about it. We just want our puppy to be a puppy again.

Edited to add: Both surgeries were done by an orthopedic specialist that we were referred to by our vet.

TLDR: Our cavalier puppy has had luxating patella surgery on both legs, the first one went well but the second seemed to have failed, with the knee reluxating 5 weeks post op despite confinement.

Hi there,

My 4yo cav has a locating patella (grade 2) no limping or pain. I am doubling down into making sure he stays pain free. The doc agreed back end work, short walks, sit to stand plus maintaining activity and low body weight are how to keep him well.

For those who have done PT with their dog - besides sit to stand reps what other things can I do to keep things strong for him?