Hi Kat - our border collie, Willow, has a similar issue and we took her for a course of laser treatment - I can't say it's a miracle but she has gain a massive amount mobility back. Ask your vet - it's not what you'd call cheap, £80 for a course of 6 but it does make a difference.

I'll start by answering your question.  If you edit your original post, right at the top it gives you the choice of topic.

So, I don't know if my story is exactly uplifting but I'll go with hopeful...maybe.  First you need to know a little history.  I smoked for about 40 years and quit about five years ago and I have had back problems all of my life due to a couple of incidents.  It was so bad that I had a dislocated collarbone and didn't even reallize it.  I started working on the back about fifteen years ago (and just, altogether, my physical health), mostly with Tai Chi and walkng an insane amount.  So, I had fixed it quite a bit, including fixing the dislocation purely through Tai Chi exercise.  With all of that, I just couldn't quite get the back into completely proper shape.  I could go into a alot of tecnical detail but, in general, the right-hand side just wasn't quite right and I was running out of ways to fix it any further.  When I started, I couldn't hardly sit at the piano, for example, for more than a handful of minutes without being in agony.  I got to the point where I could sit at the piano for a couple of hours but it was still terribly painful by the time I finished.  So, being an ex-smoker without a lot of willpower, I occasionally smoke a cigarette and it knocks me right on my ass every time.  Literally, sometimes.  So, I'm outside smoking a cigarette and do exactly what I know better than to do.  Bend over.  The blood rushes to my head and I lose my balance.  So, that is exactly what happened and I fall on my back on my right-hand side and it knocks my ribs in such a way that it straightens out that final little kink that I couldnt' get out of my back.  My back is now in just about perfect shape.  Now, there are no problems at all with the back.  I can sit a the piano for hours without end without a single twinge to the back.  So, that is what I call a Serendipitous event.  A fortunate accident that, when enough of them happen to you, you start to have a hard time giving it all up to coincidence.  Especially when one of them is as dumb a falling on your back to fix it rather than damage it further.

I'm still not sure it even fits the hopeful category.  Strange is more like it.