Question for Vet or anyone else on this one

[TrapsMcLats]

My 5 year old pit has a weird habbit of being dead asleep and then waking up suddenly, sprinting a shorts distance across the room and then looking around, then calmly walking back to his bed or whever he was sleeping (our bed) and going back to sleep.  Sometimes he'll do this allnight long, somtimes he'll go weeks without doing it.  I've got a couple guesses, 1 is that he gets leg cramps (as he has bad back legs that are malformed, need a questionable surgery of being broken in three places on each leg, reset and hoping for the best and each patella is a grade IV luxation... or as bad as you can get without being crippled i guess) and they startled him awake, but he never holds a leg up or anything.  my other guesses are that he has bad dreams or bad gas.  Any thoughts on this one or heard anything about it/like it?

[Vet]

My 5 year old pit has a weird habbit of being dead asleep and then waking up suddenly, sprinting a shorts distance across the room and then looking around, then calmly walking back to his bed or whever he was sleeping (our bed) and going back to sleep.  Sometimes he'll do this allnight long, somtimes he'll go weeks without doing it.  I've got a couple guesses, 1 is that he gets leg cramps (as he has bad back legs that are malformed, need a questionable surgery of being broken in three places on each leg, reset and hoping for the best and each patella is a grade IV luxation... or as bad as you can get without being crippled i guess) and they startled him awake, but he never holds a leg up or anything.  my other guesses are that he has bad dreams or bad gas.  Any thoughts on this one or heard anything about it/like it?

any signs before it happens---ie like growling, movements, stirring?

[TrapsMcLats]

none, thats why i am skeptical on it being bad dreams.  If he's dreaming, he'll have little cute running movements and barely audible barks.  He's never growled, so we'd definetely notice that.  Its completely out of the blue, which is why i'm more leaning towards a cramp or some type of musulo-skelatal thing.

[Vet]

none, thats why i am skeptical on it being bad dreams.  If he's dreaming, he'll have little cute running movements and barely audible barks.  He's never growled, so we'd definetely notice that.  Its completely out of the blue, which is why i'm more leaning towards a cramp or some type of musulo-skelatal thing.

Or a startle response---my male when he got older used to sleep very, very deeply.  You could come up and tickle his toes and he'd just sleep thorugh it.... most of the time.  Every so often hed jump awake and literally launch himself over the back of the couch onto the floor, where he'd smack the ground really hard.  He'd then get up, look around wild eyed, and see us, wag his tail and come back to the couch.  He'd do the same thing if a door slammed when he was asleep. 

[TrapsMcLats]

Its definetely odd, but i don't see what could be startling him.  It'll be 2am, no noise, no... anything.  and he'll just bolt, look around and walk back to wherever he was laying before.

[emn1964]

How is his daily level of exercise?

[TrapsMcLats]

Like i said, he's go bad legs, so we have to keep it down (well, low impact)... but i walk him for at least an hour every morning and 1/2- 1 hr every night.