A Corny Tale

Sidney is an active  4 year old Whippet who had become lame on his left front leg over the covid lockdown of 2020.

At the time there had been some grit and a small wound in his toe pad which was investigated under anaesthesia with the offending abnormal tissue cut away. However, the problem didn’t entirely resolve and Sidney represented to us a number of times subsequently.

What eventuated was that Sidney had developed an abnormal growth of tissue in his front pad known as a “corn”. Corns are painful to touch and also to walk on, especially on hard ground or gravel.

A traditional approach to this problem is to cut the corn away which we did again, and subsequently a specialist did the same. Whilst this approach has worked in many dogs over the years, it isn’t always successful and sadly, it didn’t work for Sidney.

The theory is that the corn can develop as a result of abnormal pressures on the pad when walking, so in recurrent cases a modification of the anatomy can be performed to change the points of pressure on the pad.

So in January this year Vet Cliff Maw performed a superficial digital flexor tenotomy. This means that he operated to find the specific tendon which causes flexion of the toe joint on the affected digit.

He then cut a section out of the tendon so that it no longer had the ability to flex that toe.