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I have another toe dilemma! Minnie is a 2 year old female spayed great dane who was rehomed to her current owners 3 weeks ago.It was mentioned to the new owners that she had a deformity of her front paw but it was reported that it did not cause her any bother. Since bringing her home, her new owners have noticed that she IS bothered by her paw and limps on it when she walks on uneven surfaces, particularly stoney or pebbled surfaces. We expect she did not have much experience with these surfaces previously and spent most of her time enclosed in a small grassed garden area and we know her previous owner did not walk her.
I have attached some images of her paw. She preferentially offloads the right forelimb and stands with her right shoulder extended and right carpus extended. The second and third DIPs are basically hyperextended most of the time, however she can seem to actively flex the 3rd DIP and the owner is sure she can actively flex the second too, although I did not see evidence of this in the clinic. Oddly enough there is no tightness of her digital extensors on testing. The main limiting factor to the digit flexion seems to be the enlarged abnormal pad underneath her foot. It seems like the digital pad and the metacarpal pad are joined into 1 large pad, however as you can see by the picture, part of the pad surface is abnormal - it is softer and has hair follicles which are growing hair. She seems quite sensitive to touch on this part of the pad. She has pain and some mild limitation at end of range right elbow flexion so I am concerned her altered weight bearing is starting to have effects further up the chain now, and her 4th digit seems to be rotating slightly - maybe it was always like this, however it looks similar to a progressive compensation like humans get with foot issues.
Has anyone had any experience with anything like this?? We are considering a boot for her to wear when she is out walking, however I'm concerned she won't fit a boot properly due to her digit extension, so I'm thinking about modifying the boot to lift behind the enlarged pad to allow the digits to drop down but I'm not sure if I am clever enough to design this properly?! Is there any way to increase the toughness of the pad? She has started doing some forelimb weight bearing on a stippled aircushion to try and encourage some strengthening of her carpal flexors, any other things you think may be worth trying with her? TIA!!!!

Hey Kristie,

Interesting case. I've not had one exactly like this... but ones similar. The only thing I find odd is that of elbow OA on the same side as a compensation. I usually find the offloading causes OA in the opposite leg. BUT, perhaps the deformity of the leg extends beyond the foot and may also be impacting the leg length... and hence the potential for elbow OA.

It doesn't much matter, because it still boils down to "what do you do?"

I don't think you can 'fix' this problem. I think you create modifications.
A custom padded boot would be my thought.
Before you order anything, perhaps try some padding and loosely vetwrap it under the foot.
I'd contact Therapaw about making a custom bootie that would accommodate the deformity... but do a test first (i.e. padding & vetwrap) to see if it improves the walking.

Best of luck and please keep us posted!

Laurie