30/08/2025
This is why is so critical to find a good biomechanics vet to look at issues causing pain that may be contributing to any behavioral issues.
🥹 Meet Hugo 🥹
A very young border collie from one of our favorite breeders. He comes from champion show breeder with remarkable temperament and impeccable lines.
His owners committed themselves to him, taking him to multiple trials, training events, and activities, giving him every opportunity to thrive.
But along the way, Hugo began to struggle with behavioral issues. Lashing out and lunging when on walks. They took hom to a behaviourial vet who instead of looking deeper into the behaviour changes, he grossly misdiagnosed him as having neurological aggression.
Before we even MET Hugo we knew this wasnt plausible due to the pattern of who he had bitten and how he behaved. They had patterns. Neurological aggression is spontaneous.
That vet’s “solution”? To recommend that Hugo be euthanized....murdered....without even attempting a single training intervention. This isn’t just shocking, it’s negligence. And heartbreakingly, Hugo isn’t the first. He’s the fourth dog in just 14 months whose owners have come to us in desperation after being told their dog should be killed because it's "unfixable". My heart breaks thinking how many owners have had their pets senselessly put down by trusting this one vet.
Thankfully, Hugo’s story doesn’t end there. His owners agreed to fight for him and surrendered him to us, and we immediately brought him to Cathy from Above & Beyond. Already, we’re uncovering some truth:
Hugo’s was in significant pain. Paul Knight discovered his hips were severely out of rotation, upper lumber was all jammed, he had mid thoracic restriction, c1 c5 and c7 were not moving appropriately causing permanent migraine. He ran around like a normal dog which is why pain is never diagnosed correctly.
This is exactly why we fight for these dogs. Every life matters. Every dog deserves more than a death sentence born out of misdiagnosis. Hugo will now have the chance he deserves and his owners can know that the dog they poured so much energy into, is going to come out the other side.
This is also why we have so much trust in Cathy and our holistic team. She saw straight away that one eye was bigger than the other which means trapped nerves and muscles around the neck! Something the untrained eye wouldn't have even noticed.
