My dog had a distemper shot two weeks agoe we don't know if it's that or age,He is 11 years old. But have noticed he yelps occasionally throughout the day and right after has trouble walking it seems and balance.

Here is a complete explanation. http://www.edbond.com/distemper/ODEtreatmentinthecanine09.html

But I'm confused. Who diagnosed the dog with neuro distemper?

Neuro distemper is a phase of distemper that may happen in dogs of any age. It is indicating that the dog is showing signs of nerve problems, such as seizures, incoordination, weakness and instability, and maybe paralysis.

It is the result of how the animal's immune system responds to the initial infection, whether it rapidly responds, or is delayed but still produces immunity, or completely fails to respond. If the dog responds quickly, the immunity usually allows the dog to recover. If slowly or not at all, it will experience the disease, and more often have some brain disfunction as a result of the effect of the virus. In some dogs, this results in 'chewing gum' fits, which are a form of seizure activity. Others have more typical seizures. These both tend to be permanent. Later in life, other symptoms may appear, and are as mentioned above. But, since there are other causes of these symptoms, proving that they may be due to distemper, and be 'neuro distemper' related is difficult, usually requiring a spinal fluid test.

Which is why I wonder if there may not be some other reason for your dog's symptoms, such as...
Dogs don't usually 'yelp' unless they have a sudden pain. I'm thinking that a yelp, followed by trouble with balance and walking in an 11 year old dog could possibly be due to something like arthritis of the hips or spine, or even a back problem?

I am sending this link to an article on Neuro Distemper. It gets more in depth than you may appreciate, but it still presents the general idea in a less specific, more understandable way.

http://www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-angels.com/distemper.htm

Neuro distemper is a phase of distemper that may happen in dogs of any age. It is indicating that the dog is showing signs of nerve problems, such as seizures, incoordination, weakness and instability, and maybe paralysis.


It is my understanding (or what I think is being said) that the dog had a distemper "shot" 2 weeks ago and now has these symptoms.

Would the dog be given the "shot" if he had been diagnosed with neuro distemper and/or would the "shot" cause him to develop neuro distemper?

I am reading "no" to both but I cannot find a site which is terribly clear.

My understanding was that he had his shot (vaccination) 2 weeks ago, and a sort of question as to whether the shot may have caused the reaction he was seeing. There is one disease... distemper, and it may manifest itself in a couple ways... or three, if you call death one. Recovery always leaves some after effect, whether it's just chronic wasting and thriftiness, or the dry, crusty, snotty nose and thick eye boogers, or seizures. Any type of nervous system signs are called neuro. A dog may have seizures fairly soon after manifesting the disease, but that's because of how fast it moves through the dog. Weakness and incoordination in older dogs are sometimes blamed on prior infection with the disease, but this requires finding antibodies in the Spinal fluid for confirmation.

This disease has been the scourge of dogs since,. and although it has gotten much attention, there is still more to learn from it, and research to be done. It used to be relatively straight forward in diagnosis and 'treatment', with a rather predictable outcome. Thanks to new techniques and knowledge, that is not quite the case now. This also holds for most all areas of human and vet medicine.

I also suspect that this dog has also had regular vaccinations since he was a pup. If you're still vaccinating at 11, that requires more than a little devotion to 'health', IMO.