Truffles

Apparently Truffles was feeling left out with Shakey getting all the expensive veterinary attention. In July, we were taking the dogs to the park to go swimming and playing. Truffles had slowed down a little bit, but we just thought it was her age (she's 10) catching up to her.

But then towards the end of July, she was stopping a lot on our walks, so we took her to the vet who put her on Rimadyl. After 2 weeks I told him the Rimadyl made no improvement. He said "well, it must not be artheritis, then, it is probably Degnerative Myelopathy. What's that? DM is a neurological disease that is prevelent in German Shepherd Dogs, Boxers, Corgis and Chesepeake Bay Retreivers. Truffles is a Lab, but the vet said it's possible she could get it, too. He said we could either put her to sleep or take her to a neurologist. What choice is that?

So, we wisked her off to the Neurologist at the beginning of August for an MRI and X-Rays. Neurologist states that she has bad artheritis, but thankfully no compression to her spinal cord, so probably not DM. Hurray. He sends us home with a list of supplements a mile long.

End of August, she is having more trouble. Steve is carrying her outside to go potty because she can't negotiate the steps. And we have to give her support when she goes potty so she doesn't fall. She can walk a little bit, but not much. We take her back to the neurologist. "Oh, maybe she's hypothyroid, lets do a blood test." (note, blood test was $160, MRI was $2,000, one would think he would have started with the cheaper test...). But, when the results came back, she was normal for her "free-T-4", which Steve pointed out was not very 'free' at all!

So Neurologist (actually his intern) says "well, it must be an A-typical case of DM." Other than the supplements she's on, the only other thing you can do is hydrotherapy. I called the hydrotherapy place they recommended. It would have cost $750 upfront for 10 sessions and $65 each session after that. I called around and found a fancy dog hotel called the Barkley that has a fancy pool. They said "Hey for $25 for 30 minutes, we'll have a girl swim her." Great! So now Truffles goes swimming at the Barkley twice a week and LOVES it and the nice lady that showers her with attention. In fact, everyone there just fawns over Truffles. She loves her swim dates.
And they've been helping her a lot, too. She now fully extends her legs when she swims and uses all four legs. The girl is great, she knows just how long to let Truffles swim before she needs a break. It's the best $25 I spend! We're very pleased.

As of September, Steve has to carry her out to go potty and carry her everywhere. She can no longer sit, stand or walk.

We had a wonderful cart made by a wonderful man in Concord. He made it in a 'walker' style rather than stirrups holding her legs up, she actually walks in it and it supports her weight. She seems to like it.
I decided there was nothing to lose so we've started acupuncture with her. And the vet that does the acupuncture was Truffles very first vet, whom we only left because she sold her practice and moved away. Turns out she moved to a town close to where we moved to 4 years ago and now she does only holistic stuff. So Truffles has been reunited with Dr. Decker and is getting acupuncture. She seemed to respond to it with more energy and ability to hold herself upright now. Also, Dr. Decker decided to put her on Prednisone, a steriod. It seems to be helping, too. Dr. Decker agrees with the Neurologist that it doesn't seem to be DM, but also doesn't know what it is. Unlike the Neurologist, she's not giving up. She's been reading through medical journals to try to figure out what it could be.

Truffles is losing a ton of weight. We are feeding her as much as she'll eat, but she's still losing. Now Dr. Decker says maybe it's something attacking her muscles, rather than her nervous system. We have another acupuncture appointment on Friday and she's going to do some research before then to see if she can come up with anything. I like Dr. Nan Decker.