I just saw this, as Helen said IOHC is more common in Springers than Cockers but it does crop up. From what you've said of Toby's symptoms though I'm not sure. Tilly is a rescue, I got her when she was 2 and she always had intermittent periods of lameness on her front leg, it would usually flare up after a period of intense exercise - usually if she had a really long session of chasing a ball with a lot of jumping and twisting or sometimes after she was out working and she'd jumped fences/ditches etc. and it would last about 12-24 hours and then she'd be back to normal again. It was only very occasionally that the lameness would last longer than that, such as in the case below when I think she probably wrenched or tore a muscle as well which exacerbated it. Anyway, it basically means that her shoulder joint isn't fused properly and there's an inherent weakness there, she's lucky that she's never broken the leg as that is quite common in dogs with the condition. It's been a couple of years since I took her for the scans etc. and she's still got it obviously, but we just manage it. She still goes lame occasionally but I try to limit her ball chasing now and she doesn't work any more due to this and to her various other health problems (she's a bit of a crock bless her
) so that helps. I always have a supply of metacam, I did give it to her daily previously but now she just gets it if she starts going a bit stiff or I see her starting to favour the leg. She's had a couple of longer lame periods in the last couple of years, usually lasting 4 or 5 days but generally it's still around 1 day and then she's ok again.
I hope you get Toby's lameness cleared up soon, it does sound like he could have badly damaged a muscle or something like that and it's just taking a bit longer than usual to heal.
