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2.5 yr mini poodle diagnosed by Ultrasound at specialist vet with left Iliopsoas strain. I know these can take a while to rehab and we have spent 4 months doing all the rehab in the book and the owner is soooooo diligent it's frightening. Supposedly the original signs were skipping off the affected leg every few trot strides when off lead - apparently never lame. Has not been lame in the time I have been working with her. I saw her this week and found nothing sore anywhere on her palpation wise, she stretches that hip into extension actively with no compromised movement so I said start allowing her off lead (we have been doing some running on lead (1minute runs) and changes of direction and stop starts for past 3 weeks). Owner says dog did a few skips when off lead for the second 3 minutes - dog only trotted off lead - did not run around. Has been previously checked for patella lux.

What am I missing? Do I send her back to specialist for re-scan of muscle? Do we just see a little bit if it gets worse as we continue to progress?

I saw a similar presenting case where the psoas was the "issue" when I started seeing the dog. He would carry/skip his hind limb and the progression of healing follows your same pattern when I was treating the psoas. He did well for a year until he moved to an area that he had to use a lot of stairs. Then, the skipping started again, only when trotting or running. I ended up finding some lumbar pain after exercise and we started warming, massaging and performing tail traction daily. We also perform laser to the spine weekly. It seems to have cleared the skipping in a short time frame. It makes me wonder if he had a spine issue all along that I never addressed.

Not sure if this helps, but see if adding some back work into your regimen helps!

Great discussion!

So I'm going to throw another thought into the mix:

Poor motor control and timing of the abdominals.
I've had a handful of dogs that will do a skip (not a hold the leg up sort thing), but just a skip, and if you watch the dogs in slow motion, it's almost as if their back end falls out of time with their front, so they do a little skip to readjust and correct the timing.

In these cases, I found that working on motor control and timing helped (see video training 16), and that when out for walks to wrap the abdominals to provide feedback to stimulate better abdominal use (see video training 35).

(And otherwise, check the patella for Lateral luxation, or a luxation in flexion... I've had a handful of 'weird ones!)

Best of luck! Laurie