Jefferson, my beautiful adopted Black Lab, gave the biggest scare of both our lives this weekend. I honestly thought this morning I was going to have to put him down. My heart has ached the past 36 hours.
Sunday morning started off like any other weekend morning with the dogs. I fed them breakfast, read the morning paper while the food settled in their tummies, then took them on our daily 2-mile walk. It was all normal and good until about 3/4 of the way through the walk, when Jefferson just collapsed and rolled over. He didn’t pass out, but was definitely delirious for a brief time. The time was around 7:30am and we were still about 1/2 mile from home. I was wishing I had a cell phone with me, but then, who would I have called anyway at that hour? I was panicking on how I was going to get him back to the house. Mikita was being of no help whatsoever. Fortunately, he seemed to quickly resume his faculties and slowly walked his way back home. But over the next two hours his condition got progressively worse. By 10:00am he was walking around in circles, stumbling and falling, and his head was tilted to the left, all the while still alert and aware of his surroundings. I called the Vet Emergency Clinic. They didn’t open until noon on Sundays so I had 2 hours to wait.
My mom, bless her heart, drove to my house and we used her car to take him to the clinic. It was much easier to lift him into a Corolla than it would have been trying to lift him “up” into my 4-Runner. We got to the clinic at 12:05pm. They helped get him out of the car and rolled him inside on a gurney. He was such a good little boy.
The staff at the clinic couldn’t have been nicer and any more compassionate. The doctor diagnosed him with a stroke and a severe bladder infection – neither related to each other.
Last night his condition was sad. He couldn’t stand up on his own and could barely walk 5-feet without collapsing. The only things that were normal were his appetite and his recognition abilities. He would always wag his tail when I walked in the room. Love that!
I had hoped overnight with a good night’s rest he would have improved. But it wasn’t the case. He was just as pathetic this morning.I laid down on the floor with him, caressing his forehead and crying my eyes out at the thought of losing him. I’ve only had to make the “euthanasia” choice once in my life when I had to put my 18-year old cat down back in 2001. It was a very traumatic experience… one that I didn’t want to have to go through again today.
But around noon today, something special happened. He got up on his own and walked out the back door to the yard to go do his “duties”. All on his own. I didn’t have to help him up and I didn’t have to coax him outside. But the downside was his head was still tilting and he still wobbled and couldn’t walk a straight line.
Time came to take him to his normal vet for – what I feared to be a “final visit”. I honestly thought we were going to have to put him down. It was so sad because he was so alert, but his body just wasn’t holding up. I had to think about what was fair to him. Should I force him to live a miserable life just because I wanted to keep him around a little longer?
When Dr. Stevenson walked in the room and read his chart from yesterday’s Emergency Clinic, she immediately diagnosed him with Old Dog Disease, which in medical terms was Canine Vestibular Syndrome. (Click on that link to learn more about it.) She said some vets often confuse the symptoms with that of a stroke. And many times, dogs are needlessly put to sleep because of this mis-diagnosis. All of his symptoms: head tilt, walking in circles, wobbling walk, twitching eyes were all classic symptoms of Canine Vestibular Syndrome. She did a full evaluation of Jefferson.
Where do we stand? He’s doing better – he’s getting up on his own more often, but his head still tilts and he has a wobbly walk. But he is very alert, very hungry, and less dizzy. The doctor said in some cases the head tilt may never go away so we’ll wait and see on that. She did more lab work on his bladder infection and we’ll probably change medications to get that under control. I am giving him Dramamine for his dizziness and vertigo. (Yes, the same meds we humans take for motion sickness.)
If he doesn’t improve significantly, I’ll take him back for another evaluation in a few days. But cross your fingers that he make a big comeback. He is – the comeback kid.
God Bless Jefferson.
