Just under a week ago, our lives changed.
Puppy Dog went out to potty and, five minutes later, came limping up to his dad, his right front paw held close to his chest, and his gait severely damaged, causing him to tilt over and almost fall at every step.
We rushed to the vet and he sent us directly to a neurologist.
Turns out he has suffered an injury called an FCE - Fibrocartilaginous Embolism. It happens when a dog is running and comes to a rapid stop, or jumps awkwardly. Essentially a small piece of the disc comes off and gets into the bloodstream. It then causes a blockage and the spinal chord is starved of blood. The blood reroutes through other vessels but, in the interim, there has been something like a stroke to the spinal chord.
The result is paralysis.
Some dogs are completely paralyzed. The good news is that it's a neurological injury so it's about the messages getting to the right place which means that, with rehabilitation, a complete or very good recovery is possible.
In fact, you can usually see a small improvement in your dog each and every day. There are videos online, like this one, that show a dog's progress through recovery.
Luckily for us, this is the very best prognosis it could have been considering his symptoms. Other options would have been an exploded disc, or even cancer.
Still, as you can imagine, it was incredibly scary.
And it has changed our lives significantly.
I was catching up with the second season of In Treatment the other day, which is based around a psychologist and the patients he's treating. One of the characters said that her life had been rerouted, and that's what I feel has happened to us.
Things have changed, and that's just the way it is.
We have to do physiotherapy with Puppy Dog on his right side four times a day, along with massage. We also have to massage his left side, because he's using that side to stay upright, walk, etc. There is a danger that the overuse could cause a blown out knee or some other injury, so we have to keep the muscles loose.
Each bit of physio and massage takes about 20-30 minutes if you do it well, so consider the time out of your day.
I am not complaining about our darling dog here. What I am trying to do is describe how our lives have changed.
Why? Because if you came to our house you'd see a dog limping, who is walking a little better each day. No biggie, right?
Nope.
Finding ways to make life easier for him, and stop him trying to do the things he always has - like jump up and run to the door when there's a knock - has meant he has to be constantly supervised, and we've had to come up with processes and mitigations.
We now have 8 rubber-backed rugs all over our wooden floors, because he slips and can't walk. We've built a ramp down the steps out of our back door to the yard. There are pee pads on all his beds, because he's had accidents.
Getting into the car to go anywhere is a melodrama. Carry him to the car, try to get him to pee on the grass easement before we leave, he won't (he likes privacy to go potty). Lift him into the car, he poops. Take out the towel in the car, take it to the porch, get Nature's Miracle, pour it on the towel. Get another towel and take it to the car. Rearrange the pee pads and put the towel on top. Decide we should have some Nature's Miracle in the car. Go back to the house, get the Nature's Miracle. Go back to the car. Try to get him to sit. Try again. Force him to sit. Finally leave.
I am loathe to mention it, but we have to also consider the costs. Vet, emergency vet, rehab vet evaluation, water therapy, massage. This is going to wipe out the money we managed to squirrel away over the last 6 months.
The stuff above is bad, but there are two things that make this really difficult.
The first is the pressure on us, which manifests as bickering. One of us forgets to bring X to the car, or holds him a way that the other doesn't agree with, or steps away for a moment and that's when he decides to get up and falls over, and we snap at each other. We're both scared and angry and stressed out and tired and sad... and we take it out on each other.
The second is the grieving.
Our boy, our beautiful, vibrant, uberfit boy, who swam and ran and jumped, is lying on the pee pad, towel covered bed in the house and he doesn't understand what's happened to him. Will he fully recover? You want to stay positive, but the question is in your mind anyway. It's heartbreaking.
And our little girl. She doesn't know why everything has changed either. She doesn't know why she can't play with him, why her humans are displaying emotions that she is tuning into, and they are not happy ones. Her energy is down, she's tentative and much more tired than usual.
This is hard. This is ugly. This isn't fair.
The silver lining is seeing him get a little better each day. It's seeing his gait improve after his first water therapy session. It's seeing him finally get over his privacy issues and pee outside with one of us holding him up by his side.
It's each little thing that shows it's getting better.
But, for now, it hurts.
And that's our story.
To read more in the Doggy Mama series, click here.
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