[TrinaJ]

In a young dog the vet may say its an infection in the bone but as your dog is 9 it could possibly be bone cancer. I too am very surprised the vet didn't x-ray to rule it out. Its a very quick growing and painful cancer. I hope that i am wrong but i urge you to take your dog back to the vet for some pain treatment. He is hodling his leg up which means that its too sore to even limp on and he's in lots of pain.

My last dog had an anterior cruciate ligament tear in his leg, this was so painful that he couldn't put his paw down at all. We thought it was his paw that was sore, but we couldn't see any evidence of something wrong with his paw so we took him immediately to the vet. This is very very common in large breed dogs.

Hope it is just a sprained knee. Did the vet give you any advice as to how to manage his pain (ie ice, heat pad etc? like we would do to ourselves if we sprained our knee)?