Hi,
We have a four year old male retired greyhound. We've had him for just over a year, and he is, of course, perfect.
Every couple of months since we've got him, he's started hobbling, then limping, whilst walking on hard and rough surfaces (fine on grass and carpets, and generally fine on our wooden floor). The owner of the kennels where we adopted him from attributed this to cracked pads, caused by walking on pavements after only ever being on grass/sand, and suggested vaseline to keep them soft. This has generally been effective, and each time he was walking normally again in a week or two, and we started moisturising his paws twice a week, even if they weren't sore.
However, he's had a sore paw for around six weeks now (maybe two months). When daily vaseline treatment didn't improve him, we took him to the vet, who said it was probably just hard skin on his pads causing him discomfort. She cut off the worst bits, and gave him some pain medication as she thought his hip was bothering him, probably because of walking funny. That was about a month ago. Since then, we've started putting this paw butter on his paw daily. His paw seems to have toughened up with this, but his walking hasn't really improved at all. He wears a Therapaw boot when walking, and gets along fine, but if we take it off then he starts hobbling again. Again, he walks fine on soft surfaces, and on smooth surfaces, but starts limping if he's on a hard rough surface.
Is there anything else we could try? Or just carry on with the paw butter/vaseline?