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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The Mysterious Dachshund Heads


(click image to enlarge)

This is an x-ray of one of your hosts of The Long and Short of it All, 'Joey.' He has nothing to hide! It was taken in January of 2008 when we thought he was in back pain. Turns out he had eaten too much houseplant.
The veterinarian mentioned "the dachshund heads" visible in his spine, the small dark areas which "were appropriate for Joey the dachshund!" They should be well-defined dachshund head profiles though, and aren't so great in his lumbar region, his lower back, especially where his tail begins.
Like many dachshunds, Joey and his littermate sister Maggie's use of the stairs and their jumping are as limited as possible to hopefully prevent complications of IVDD, Intervertebral Disc Disease.
For more general info on IVDD, please visit Dodgerslist. If you'd like to read more information about calcified discs specifically, and find out more about the dachshund heads, this nice article on Dodgerslist refers to them as "horseheads."

Related: More on Dachshund Health

2 comments:

  1. So it follows that there are profiles of a woman's head in my spine? Cool.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Uhmm.. dachshund supposedly not going up and down the stairs?

    Uh oh.. my dachshunds love it and do all the time...

    ReplyDelete