Disclocated knew joint???

I noticed this evening that my 4 months old Yorkie-poo was slightly
limping. Her front left leg was visibly bent, and she was favoring it.
When she sat up, it was off to the side and further back than her front
right leg. When I felt the front legs, the left leg felt different that
the right one - as she had dislocated her knee (?) joint.
My wife and kids saw it, and agreed it looked wrong/broken/dislocated.

I figured I need to take her to a vet tomorrow.
I put her in her pen to limit her movement.
She took a nap on her pillow for an hour or so.
Now (about 2 hours after noticing the anormaly), it looks OK, and she
does not limp or favor the left leg?
What could have happened?

Earlier in the day, one of the neighbor's kids was holding her and
dropped her to the ground. Could this be the cause of her injury?
Whatever the cause was, how did it get healed or snapped back into
place? Is this a sign that she would have a chronic joint issues? Will
she suffer from more episodes of dislocated joints?

"JKC" <jkcjkcjkc.TakeThisOut@yahoo.REMOVE.yahoo> wrote in message
news:Xns9758CFBB3C8Fjkcjkcjkc@24.93.43.119...
>I noticed this evening that my 4 months old Yorkie-poo was slightly
> limping. Her front left leg was visibly bent, and she was favoring it.
> When she sat up, it was off to the side and further back than her front
> right leg. When I felt the front legs, the left leg felt different that
> the right one - as she had dislocated her knee (?) joint.

Dogs, like humans, don't have knees in the front limbs. However, she could
have dislocated either her elbow or her shoulder.
Yes, being dropped could have caused that, and yes, dislocated joints will
sometimes go back into place without vet/doctor attention - you may have
inadvertently done so when you examined the leg.
I have put dislocated shoulders back in both a rabbit and a dog by gently
moving the leg through the normal range of motion. (Rabbit leaped out of
someone's hands, dog slipped on wet steps.)

And yes, a dislocation can lead to problems later on, depending on whether
or not the bones were injured and/or how badly the connective tissue got
torn/stretched. My dog who dislocated her shoulder at about 9 months
developed arthritis in the joint later in life.

You should still take your puppy to the vet and have an X-ray done, to
determine whether there is any damage to the bones; your vet should also be
able to advise in more depth as to what could have been going on if it
wasn't a dislocation.


And you've probably figured this out, but - letting children, especially
ones not in your family, handle/carry a small/toy breed puppy is NOT a good
idea, IMO. I know of more than one puppy who has broken bones in similar
circumstances.