Progressive Retinal Atrophy/Degeneration

Gabby came to me as a foster, and not really a dog, but I've told that story before. One of the things I noticed from the start is that Gabby was either very clumsy, or had some vision loss. It really wasn't a pressing matter, as there were other, more time sensitive medical issues that needed to be taken care of. She needed a bath (or five), and to have the mats shaved out from between her toes. She needed to have her ear infection treated, and her urinary tract infection treated. She needed a dental, with a few teeth extracted. She needed soft places to lie so the callouses on her elbows would heal and her hair could grow again. 

And in the midst of her settling into my home, she became very good at navigating familiar places. I really only noticed her bumping into things in a completely new place, I would very occasionally see her not be able to locate where a sound came from, and even more rarely, she would hesitate to move forward when out walking at night. So, it took me a while to put the pieces together again. When I did, my heart sank. I know what an incredibly common cause of vision loss is called, especially when the dog is an English Springer Spaniel.

Progressive Retinal Atrophy
(from the ESSFTA and Canine Genetic Diseases Network)

•  autosomal recessive disorder

• degeneration of the retina in dogs

•  results in permanent blindness

• rods, responsible for night vision, deteriorate first

• cones, responsible for bright light vision, deteriorate second

So, I scheduled her for an exam with a veterinary ophthalmologist I know and trust. Gabby's eye exam by Dr. Larocca of Animal Eye Speciality Center told us that Gabby has generalized retinal atrophy and bilateral diffuse retinal thinning; PRA. 

Unfortunately, it didn't stop there. Gabby also has distichiasis of both her left and right eyelids. 

"Distichiasis is a condition where eyelashes emerge from the ducts of glands within the eyelid (Meibomian gland) which does not normally produce hairs. These "extra" eyelashes often rub on the surface of the eye and may cause irritation. Distichiasis is considered to be a breed-related problem in dogs, and is most commonly found in retrievers, spaniels, poodles, Shih Tzus and Weimeranas."

And just so that we cover all the bases, she also has cataracts on the nucleus of both eyes.

I went in to the appointment knowing we'd find something wrong with her eyes. The more I thought about it, the more I realized she had to have some vision loss. I was hoping against all hope it wouldn't be PRA, but it is.

One of the reasons I take my dogs, and took Gabby specifically, to see Dr. Larocca is that I trust him. He always tells it to me straight. When he told me Gabby has PRA, he also told me that he knows of a drug trial study using Ocu-Glo to help halt the progression of PRA. He didn't know if her eyes were too progressed at this point, but he said he would make contact with the ACVO in charge of the study.

I've been giving her the human version of this supplement currently, because it's something I can do while we wait.

And of course, Gabby is just her happy self. I don't know how long this has been going on, but she's definitely coping well. PRA certainly won't stop us from having fun, but we'll probably have to make some modifications along the way!

Motivation vs Pain vs Anticipation of Pain

People who know Buzz and see him regularly know that he hasn't been "right" since early spring. He lost the spring in his step, he plodded along and only went out to potty, he had occasional good days mixed with mostly okay days. I bounced a lot of ideas off a lot of people as to why this might be happening. We speculated about a lot of things and we tried a few theories out. One thing I didn't really think about until very recently was the possibility of the anticipation of pain impacting his quality of life.

I only thought about this because Gabby recently broke my toe with her tree trunk of a front leg. My toe is healing wonderfully with some tape and a little TLC. A couple days ago I realized that I expected my toe to hurt if someone stepped on it or I bumped it. The reality is that while yes, it was uncomfortable, it didn't make me want to die anymore. But I anticipated the pain to be greater than it actually was, and that impacted what I did.

I know that Buzz loves meal time more than just about any part of the day. He is a downright obnoxious jerk while I'm preparing breakfast or dinner and pretends he has no idea of "stay!"

So I tested the theory that with sufficient motivation, Buzz could actually move at a trot or canter.

And my theory proved to be true. This video is from Thursday morning. I did the same thing Thursday night where he only trotted. I tried again on Friday morning and he cantered into the kitchen! Friday night he TROTTED outside and wanted to go for a walk, so we took a very short one (where I fed him for any attempt to maintain pace with me). When we got inside I set up the same situation asking him to run down the hallway for dinner. And he did. (I tried to get that one on video but unfortunately my Flip froze!)

I don't know if my theory will continue to hold true but I can't believe how easy his canter is. He does drag his right rear at a trot and he appears to always be on a left lead when he canters but we'll see if/how/when that changes. For now, I'm going to cherish the fact that my dog is moving faster than a turtle again!

Third Dog

The geriatric household added a new member. Except she's not geriatric, nor is she a puppy! She'll be eight years old on November 30.

Meet Gabby!

http://arohafosters.blogspot.com/2013/10/failing-fostering.html

http://sarahbethphotography.com/2013/10/02/english-springer-spaniels-october-rescue-of-the-month/

Phone photos of Buzz

I haven't been out to take real photos, with my real camera, in a long time. I might use it for a snapshot every once in a while,but it mostly just sits these days.

So, instead of missing these moments completely, I've started using my phone. The quality is poor, but I know what's going on in the photos and they make me happy. I don't want to miss out on Buzz's senior dog antics if I don't have to.

Up, Down, Around? Finding Buzz's normal again.

Buzz's health has been up and down these last few weeks. He did incredibly well with a diet change and antibiotics. Bloodwork looked WONDERFUL! And then he started panting again. And he had mobility issues. And he lost weight. And then Adequan went off the market. And I ran out of tripe, and into other dietary concerns.

In the midst of all this, I was offered a job by the person I credit to him still being here today. Having her as a sounding board (and her willingness to ask others when she's out of ideas) every day I'm at work, we've managed to get Buzz back to being Buzz again.

He just finished a second course of antibiotics. I ordered so much tripe that I shouldn't ever have an excuse for running out again. We have an alternative to Adequan when the stockpile at work is gone. And as always, she's got more up her sleeve when we need it.

And today, I came home to this...

That's a bully stick on the window sill he uses to watch for me. He greeted me at the door when I got home and was so much like the "old Buzz" that I had to drop everything and just love him. He butt waggled and shoved his face into my legs for whole body rubbing.

I am so relieved that he's feeling so darn good. 

Dr. Julia was right when she said we'd get more days like these.

Reactive Proactivity?

Devastation is what I felt when I left the vet clinic on Friday. Complete and utter devastation.

I've tried to learn so much since Friday, I think my brain might explode. It certainly doesn't all fit, but that's what saving emails is for I guess.

A couple wonderful people with some great resources have been so, so helpful. From listening to me cry and whine about the situation, to helping me dig for information about how I can help to make Buzz's body functioning better, for the short or long term.

We want to be able to spend time at the beach this summer.

A lot of it is jumbled still but here's what our tentative plan is for now.

• More Tripe. Tripe is a great protein source that's low in Phosphorus.
• Pepcid. Apparently not-fully-functioning kidneys cause excessive acid build up in the stomach and that can cause it's own issues.
• Antibiotics. Just in case. (We ran a 4DX today and it was all negative.)
• Azodyl.
• At first I panicked about the price of the Azodyl. It's a temperature sensitive supplement that's expensive to begin with. All of the websites I looked at initially either didn't ship it cold (thereby rendering it useless), or it was absolutely cost prohibitive--$100+ per month. I've gotten as far as finding it for about $65 per month, which is still quite high. I'm going to continue to look around for that one.
• And I heard today that Adequan is back in production... we will all be relieved when it's readily available again.

Oh, and we've all decided that a diet high in ice cream is necessary. He's celebrated his birthday three times in the last 10 days. He quite likes ice cream by now.

I've been looking through pictures and videos today. Here's a very old (2008!) agility video.
Buzz NADAC Regular

A Tough Day

Today was gorgeous. We woke up to the sun shining, not a drop of rain anywhere, and we headed to Wisconsin.

Bailey shows off the beautiful weather.

Unfortunately, our trip to WI was already scheduled because Buzz hasn't been acting quite normally. He's been drinking a lot more water and urinating a lot more. Some days he's so full of water he can barely make it outside before he has to pee, a lot.

After running bloodwork and such, I heard what I expected. Which happened to be the exact opposite of what I wanted. Buzz is in early stage kidney failure and it's likely that he's bleeding internally, from somewhere.

So we packed up and took ourselves to the funny farm. A ton of thoughts ran through my head and my emotions ran rampant. I'd be lying if I said I'm okay now, but at least I'm settled. We thoroughly enjoyed a couple hours at the farm, sniffing stuff outside and I even let him eat all the nasty other-animal poop he could find.

Yeah, he was happily eating some kind of poop here!

The only thing I know is that today is not his day to go. It might be tomorrow, it might be next week, and it might even be months from now. I'm trying to be okay with that and realize that all that matters to him is being happy. So we ate ice cream, french fries, and a hamburger on our way back to Burnsville today. Buzz approved whole-heartedly!

Good boy, Buzz. Good boy.

Differences--Nature vs Nurture?

Bailey's here for the night. As I was driving to pick her up from the parking lot I was meeting my mom in today (like that doesn't sound sketchy) I started thinking about the fact that sometimes it's hard to imagine she and Buzz are the same breed. They look different, they interact with dogs differently, but most interesting to me is the fact that they interact with people in vastly different ways.

I've often said I'd love a stable Bailey. I've also often said I'd love a Buzz with a tail and without allergies. Truth be told, I covet a stable Bailey more. She's just a very different dog, in a very good way. She's going to guarantee a good laugh and make me feel like an awesome trainer every time I work with her.

As I tried to put a single word on what makes her so different from Buzz I thought about how she related to other dogs I've experienced. And I can't find one.

She has always enjoyed interactions with humans almost more than anything in the world. She naturally checks in on people when out and about. It's not something I had to teach, she just did it.

She inherently enjoys playing with people, and playing physical games with people. Sure, I've been too "rough" in play occasionally that'll put her off but she's always come back for more. She will initiate play with me and she'll solicit attention with the desire to DO something, not just be pet.

And I wonder if it comes down to nature, nurture, or both. Bailey was born and raised in the living room of her breeder's home. She was exposed to multiple people throughout the 8 weeks she lived with her breeder. Since the day I got her, she's been one of those "shadow without being in the way" dogs. She always wants to engage with the people in her life, indoors, outdoors, in a new environment... it's really who she is.

In contrast, Buzz was born in an outside kennel and lived with his parents/siblings for the first almost 9 weeks of his life. There's just not a whole lot of interaction he could have gotten, had his breeders made a point of getting out to interact with the puppies even daily. I didn't realize how much of an issue his indifference to people would be. It was honestly a huge struggle to learn how to work with him, to make him care about ANY resource that I could control. In the end we were able to compete in a variety of sports successfully but only because there was the promise of food at the end of each and every run. Something I had to work insanely hard to teach him. I had to micromanage every training session so that he was never given the opportunity to disengage and leave. Buzz got the worst of both situations. He wasn't exposed to humans enough to learn that they can be a valuable resource, and I didn't know enough when I got him to help "fix" that at 9 weeks old.

After being out with Bailey tonight, I realized just how much I crave what she is, in a stable package, in my next dog. I want a dog that inherently cares about people, a dog that enjoys playing games with people, (and a dog that was born enjoying retrieving... Buzz has a solid retrieve, for food).

Doing the right thing.

When people talk about doing the right thing, it's usually regarding something other than the relationship had with a dog. In the last week, I made a heart-wrenching decision based on a a culminating event. Bailey has struggled to live in the city with me. She is stressed daily, she's conflicted daily, and she's unhappy... daily.

Bailey has been taking vacations to visit my mom for weeks at a time since early summer. This was to help give her time to relax so that she could live with me in the city again. And for a while it worked really well! She'd go away for a week or two, I'd pick her up and life would be okay for a couple more weeks in the city. And then it stopped working. She started getting anxious when I'd leave my bedroom to take a shower, she'd be so scared of being out of my bedroom that she'd just glue herself to my leg, and then she was so over threshold that she was getting upset with Buzz almost daily. We tried a lot of management techniques with very little, to no, improvement. I tried giving her Clonidine more regularly but it wasn't even helping on the evenings I had to work.

Last Sunday,she was dropped off at my house after her most recent vacation with my mom.

The scenario went something like this:
Brother calls--he's here!
I go outside to get her and she's so happy and wiggly!
We get her stuff out of the car and head toward the house.
She steps inside the house. Her tail drops, her ears go back, and I stared in disbelief... I didn't know what to do.

She was terrified of being in this house. It has so many negative associations that I just can't undo, that she just can't overcome. I know she's a sensitive soul and she was trying so damn hard, just so I could have her with me.

Last week I made the decision to let Bailey live with my mom indefinitely. I did not make this decision lightly, in fact I stressed about it for days. In the end, all of the friends I discussed it with agreed: she's so unhappy living here with me. It's such an unnecessary unhappiness as well. When she's at the farm with my mom, she's a completely different dog. She woo-woos in the morning because she's just so damn happy. She goes for multiple walks each day, in the middle of nowhere. She can relax in any area of the house she chooses because there are no other dogs.


I'll still see her, and I'm sure I'll visit more often now, but she won't have to come back to the city with me. My mom says she looks for me to come home from work every day for the first week or so, but then it gets better.

I'm not doing the right thing for me, because I tried that already, and it didn't work out. I'm doing the right thing for Bailey, because she deserves it.

I still hope that I will be able to change my living, and work, situation to accommodate her better in the future. For now though, I won't feel guilty for putting her through so much every single day.

More Rehab

Most of you probably already know that Bailey had a lump removed recently.

It was getting in the way of her active life style. It made her sad.

Now we're past the surgery and into week five of recovery. She has seen Dr. Julia twice and this last time she got some pretty sweet exercises to do (and I got some massage-type things to do). Behaviors that nobody ever thinks will come in handy that Bailey is now doing for rehab.

1. Leg Lifts
2. Side Passes (although, this specific behavior is being lured as Dr. Julia wants the feet to meet then separate, NOT cross)
3. Step on to perch, step off perch
4. Sit with front feet elevated
5. Bow
6. Fold back down
7. Tuck sit with rear feet held in

#7 is important because this is her baseline right now.

A still from a video clip

Which happens to be significantly worse than her baseline last time we worked on this.

This is how well she could sit, with effort.

Yay for more hat box sits!

And leg lifts!

Although, she's not working on the ball yet.

Most importantly though, this is what her leg looks like now!

No more lump!

Functional Dog

Bailey has just returned from a week and a half getaway vacation on The Farm. She's always a completely different dog mentally when I pick her up. She's relaxed and in the frame of mind conducive to being a normal member of society. I can take her places and do things with her and she has a normal threshold.

So, tonight when we got home from work I was a good student and we worked on separation stuff. I kept her under threshold and reinforced frequently. We even practiced crating while I worked Buzz. Basically, my dog was great.

And sometimes she came out of her crate to engage in play with me.

Buzz says that allergies are the devil. Poor Buzzer. I've unintentionally fed him three new things in the last two days. Apparently he's allergic to one or both or all of them.

Then they practiced being good dogs together on the bed.

Just My Dog

Tonight I'm feeling quite nostalgic about my old guy. I usually call him my perfect dog and brag about how easy he is to live with.

If you ignore the fact that he will steal any available food (from the counter, a table... your hand).

He is staring at the food on the table, willing his tether to malfunction.

If you pretend like he doesn't have a farting problem (even when he eats foods he's not allergic to, and takes his enzyme/probiotic supplement regularly).

If you pretend he's ever had a reliable recall in his life! (I mean, he's always been reliable in not coming, so that's still reliable, right? I usually just tell people he's deaf, which he is, but that has no bearing on his lack of recall. He is better about keeping me in sight now that he's gone deaf though.)

That is Beck's nose. Holy hell do I still miss that Grey.

Seriously though, he is the dog I compare all others to. 

He has a delightful demeanor.

He shares incredibly well.

He adapts to major changes (like moving to the middle of the ghetto) with ease.

And lets not forget that even at 14 years young, he still has a sense of adventure!

He's really just an awesome dog. In that inexplicably awesome kind of way.

I'm thankful he came into my life as a flea ridden, worm infested puppy from a stereotypical backyard breeder. He's got some nice genetics in his ancestry that made him the dog he is, and that is a very good boy.

In the Last 24 Hours

1) I emailed Ruca's new owners for an update. The last one I got was great but it's been a couple of months now and I miss her. I hope she's still doing wonderfully!

2) I hung out with most of my bestest friends last night and ended up bring both dogs along because there was the promise of water-play. Everything was going fine until Bailey was doing a water retrieve three legged, with a barely audible whine but OHMYGOD there is a BUMPER TO BE GOTTEN. So I passed Buzz off to a friend and checked her over. I felt all over her leg and she didn't make a peep. This is the leg she was scheduled to have surgery on last Thursday. The vet thought I was doing it for cosmetic reasons.

3) I gave Buzz a bath, blew him out, and trimmed him. He appreciates the fact that I'm mostly just concerned about hair removal and don't spend hours making him look presentable anymore. I really only use a clippers with a 7F and a straight scissors now. If I can't get it done with those tools, it's not going to get done. He still thinks grooming in general is a waste of time. And then I let him play in Lake Phalen. He probably thinks he smells better now.

4) While hanging out with said bestest friends, we made grilled cheese, on the grill.

photo courtesy of Sara R

5) I have decided that the best use of my morning will be to do nothing. I have a long list of what I should do (clean my bedroom, clean the bathroom, clean the stairs, do laundry, dust, vacuum, clean out the car, etc) but instead I've been sitting in bed with the dogs and just enjoying the quiet morning.