Xena
So it was after Christmas and I made the mistake of looking at a german shepherd resuce organization's page. This old girl (she's about nine years as far as anyone knows) had been at the shelter months and not found a home.
She is now having fits which are being medicated, probably from the stress of living in the shelter but also possibly just an age thing. I figured with the Xmas rush about to start at the public shelters she probably didn't stand much chance so I went to visit and you can guess the rest.
She's some sort of shepherd mix, probably border collie. Rio, our chocolate lab mix has been a real gentleman putting up with her.
Here she's thinking about joining in the local game for dogs, chase the squirrels!
Its a hard life. We didn't pose this one. Rio was in his usual repose, when Xena just quietly got up and laid down beside him and went to sleep.
Ahh, isn't she sweet. She now has one of Rio's puppy choke chains instead of the fabric collar and Xmas scarf from the shelter. And after a few groomings with her new brush and comb plus some vegetable oil in her food her coat is starting to shine now.
He's such a gentleman. Thank you Rio.
New Year's Day she had another seizure while out on a walk with me. But thats probably because we have had a mix up over the dosage of her pills. Our Vet gave her a physical and took blood samples. Physically she's ok for her age, she has an overbite and crooked teeth (hey its California!) but her heart and lungs are good and no arthritis in excess for her age. So now we have fresh Phenobarbytlol pills at the right dosage for her weight and some joint supplements to help with the arthritis (she's just a little stiff when she first gets up after a long snooze in the armchair but she shakes it off and works through it.) Her blood test showed some thyroid deficiency, probably age related, so she has some pills for that now as well. The thryoid deficiency may be the trigger for the fits starting so maybe when we get her stabilized we can wean of the Pb with no recurrence of seizures. She also has a high white cell count so we hunting for fleas or intestinal parasites now as well! Ah, the joys of rescuing an old dog - but so far nothing really unexpected and she truly is a sweet natured dog, very affectionate. I like her.
So its April Now. So far the pattern has been she's seizure free for two or three weeks then gets a few in a few days. We had eight in one weekend a few weeks ago. So now she's on Potassium Bromide drops and Phenobaribitol, the latter dosage reduced so that she's not quite so zombied out. Its hard, you want it high enough to control the seizures but you want it low enough for her to enjoy life as well. She has high days (everything gets chewed!) and just zoned out days. Hopefully we're zeroing in on the right combination of stuff for her.
The probability however is that she has some kind of brain tumor/growth so we may end up chasing an elusive goal. The drugs will stop seizure activity in otherwise healthy tissue but they can't treat the tumor if thats whats causing the seizure activity in the healthy tissue. Instead your just doping up the healthy brain before the tumor can get to it which isn't really helping anyone. But hey, she's happy on the good days and I'm happy she's having a good time. Anything is better than dying in a shelter.
Last modified: Fri Apr 27 21:35:42 PDT 2007