Cooper

This hasn't been the best week for my little man.  Cooper was running around as usual on Monday and suddenly he let out a horrifying scream of pain and crashed into a wall.  He hobbled back to me and I thought either he had dislocated a leg or injured his back.  My sister Teresa came over about forty-five minutes later.  Cooper loves her and gave her a warm, playful welcome.  I thought he was feeling better but as the night progressed however, it was clear that he was in a world of pain.  He was breathing abnormally and not able to get up and move around like usual.  We decided we'd let him sleep on it and check him in the morning.

Tuesday morning he was visibly in pain.  I called the vet and while they didn't have appointments they wanted me to bring him in since he had been trembling in pain.  They ran some tests and did some x-rays and his disks above his ribs have been slowly narrowing.  It led to a lot of pain.  Luckily, we caught his symptoms before we got to the point of needing to do surgery.  He is home resting now and needs a lot of medications to make him comfortable.  We were told to keep him crated for 4-6 weeks until his pain in his spine heals.  After that, we'll have to watch him.  He may not show more symptoms or he may.

This image I found online looked similar to Cooper's x-rays

Since Cooper hasn't been crated in years, he isn't adjusting well to this so we sectioned off our kitchen for him.  I've been trying to make his crate appealing by sticking his new fun toys inside.  At first he just batted at his items hoping they'd come to him...

He did get brave enough to go in to retrieve it.