Gracilis injury in a flyball dog

[lehughes]

Hi Laurie

I have a question.

I have an 8 yr old Border Collie patient who does competitive flyball. 2 months ago the owner thought he was a bit off his game and she found a firm RHL inner thigh muscle. Brought dog to me and the dog had a large 2.5"X1" firm chunk of scar tissue on the gracillus (I had it confirmed on ultrasound that it was only scar tissue and nothing more serious). Owner doesn't recall anytime the dog would have injuried it.

The dog is amazingly stoic and to the best of my and the owner's observations we could not perceive any lameness, only that he wasn't hitting the box turn quite right.
Long story short, after 2 months of gracillus stretches, eccentric and concentric exercises and rest from Flyball, the dog is doing well. The scar tissue is still present, but about 1/3 smaller than the original scar tissue and the gracillus stretch is excellent. The thigh girths are now equal and dog is doing well with proprioception, balance and destination jumping. The owner is wondering if this dog can go back to Fly Ball and if so, what the risks are for further aggrevating the gracillus injury. The dog turns left on the box, so he is really going to put this right gracillus on full stretch with every turn. My concern is that he may tear it again, but I have no experience with gracillus tears.
What is your experience.
Thanks so much

J

[lehughes]

Hi J,

As for your patient, interesting to have so much scar tissue. Without a primary incident, I would guess that there has been repetitive microtearing occurring for quite some time leading up to this.
Equally impressive is that you have reduced it a bit.
As for return to sport. Yes, the likelihood is high of a reinjury at some point. But this is the risk that all athletes take… and I think that most would take it.
So, it’s worth trying - because we’re not talking about a potential of blowing a disc or even tearing a cruciate… just a muscle strain. Which, if it were to occur, could be rehabbed, and THEN, I’d say 100% Nope to return after that.
However, at this juncture, there’s nothing to lose!
I’d advise the owner to start slow (i.e. 2 jumps then the box - so the speed is not quite as high. Stick with that for 10 days, then move to 3 jumps for 10 days, and then onto the 4 jumps.)
(I couldn’t decide between 1 week or 2 weeks at each distance, so I decided to ‘split the difference’. I think 10 days is smart. However, it depends on how often they train. If they train infrequently, then I’d say 2 weeks. If they train 3 or more times a week, then 10 days is my recommendation.)

Best of luck!

Laurie

[David Lane]

I agree with LEH's comments about re-injury. The only thing that I would add is to make sure the owners are educated in performing gracilis stretches themselves - both as part of the warm down ritual after exercise, but also as an early diagnositic tool. ie: if the dog does not have a full PROM gracilis stretch before a competition, then dog does not get to compete that day.

[lehughes]

Great additional advice David!

This was a question e-mailed to me. The poster wasn't able to get onto the forum... (hopefully we've sorted that out). Anyways, I'm going to post below the additional conversation we had.

Laurie

[lehughes]

Thanks so much Laurie for getting back to me on this.
I have a couple of extra questions. If we do let him return to Fly ball and he does significantly tear the muscle again is he likely to injure it badly enough that he may have issues returning to normal regular activities such as running and playing? The summary is we don't want to make him any worse than he is now. Right now he's very functional and running and playing like a normal dog.
Thanx for your help. J

[lehughes]

In my head, worse case scenario… a retear causes muscle scarring which could lead to a trauma-induced fibrotic myopathy. But by addressing a re-tear, I don’t think that would actually occur.
So, quite frankly, he may have the same chance of re-tearing with running and playing (especially with another dog) as he would have in doing Flyball.
I’d give him one more chance as an athlete…

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Laurie

[jenrehab]

Thank you so much for all the rehab. I will pass on this information to the owner. The owner is absolutely fabulous in doing the gracillus stretches (and the dog is extremely compliant) and has a good feel for how far this muscle can appropriately stretch.
I'll keep you posted on how everything goes.
Jennifer