Did you see......

....... The Bionic Vet last night?

This is the man who operated on Scoobs nearly 4 years ago, performing a dorsal laminectomy to help my boy walk properly again.  It was a rather intense convalescence, as I was supposed to limit his activity for a few weeks yet the stupid mutt decided that trying to jump a 2 foot garden wall was much more fun.  AARRGHHHH!!!!!!!  It DID fix the lameness and occasional stumble but left him with a slightly wonky tail.  Compared to the alternative - accidental severance of the spinal cord - it seemed a small price to pay.

This was taken about 6 months after surgery.  Isn't he happy?!

All was well for a couple of years before the symptoms returned.  Another visit to Noel showed that not only was scar tissue forming at the old op site and compressing the spinal cord again, but that a pinch point (caused by a bulging vertebral disc being directly under a bony overgrowth of arthritis) just below the neck was also causing problems.  Given that Scoobs was 9 by then we all decided that his age was definitely against him and we should, instead, take a palliative approach to his care.  A & I must have done something right as we had another fun-filled (and very expensive) 15 months with our wonderful hound.

Noel can come across as a bit gruff but his heart is most definitely in the right place and he is dedicated to the animals in his care.  I have seen him become distressed after being unable to help a dog (and having to PTS on the operating table).  I have seen him pull an 18+ hour shift (at the old place) when the portable - on the back of an artic - MRI broke and it took several hours to get a replacement.  Did he cancel everyone?  Nope, he stayed there till past midnight making sure every animal got the scan they were there for.  He understood the anxiety being there was putting on the pets and the efforts we owners went to to be there in the first place, not to mention the nervous fits caused by our beloved animals going under a general anaesthetic.  General anaesthetic is inherently more dangerous for animals than humans, especially the elderly kind like our pooch was.

So, hats off to the man!!!!  If I ever have another dog, not that I'm planning that right now, and it needs neuro-orthopaedic help, he will be the one I expect to see.

Playing Catch Up - again

The snow has been and gone - for now. We are all getting back to normal. Most of the downstairs of the house is fur free - it's amazing how much he shed. The running routine is coming back and the weight-loss is progressing slowly.

D has decided that being home educated for the past 4.5 years has given him the edge over his classmates at college, as he is used to finding things our for himself and not waiting for the teacher to come along and help him solve his problems. Now I just have to hope he continues this at university.

K has a bit of a sniffle and a lot of attitude today. She reckons she didn't sleep well last night so I've told her to get her light out earlier tonight.

A is also sniffly, and feeling quite sore this evening. He came out for a run with me this afternoon and now his knees and back are letting him know they exist!

I have a serious urge to spring-clean - no I'm not pregnant! This has caused a few aches in the neck and shoulders but my osteopath friend is on the case.

We were supposed to be going to Nottingham this weekend. However the snow that has fallen between here and there has put this off for a couple of weeks or so. It's a shame really as we adults were hoping that it would be just the two of us. The kids are getting to that age where they don't always want to do what we do and we think they are ready to be left overnight (having been babysitting for themselves for at least a couple of years now).

Grief stricken

It is with great sadness that I must announce the passing of a dear friend. Today our wonderful companion of 10 years, Scooby Doo, will leave us. His life, of late, has been difficult. He has had to deal with hip and elbow dysplasia, degenerative disc disease (and one operation to relieve compression of the spinal cord caused by this), arthritis, recurring superficial pyoderma, and a non-specific allergy giving him a drippy nose and gummy eyes. Add to that the suspicion of chronic degenerative retinal myelopathy (look up CDRM online to find out how much fun that is), which can't be definitively diagnosed pre-mortem.

I think it's 10 years ago next week since I fetched this bundle of fluff from a local breeder. He instantly settled in, hardly crying at all at night. However we soon realised that he was easily bored and tended towards destruction if not supervised. He was also very sociable and thought that everyone loved him and was his friend. Somehow he worked out how to open the door on our 6 foot upright freezer, the one with the killer vacuum door seal that we need two hands to open. So everytime I went out I would come back to a freezer full of semi defrosted food. A dog crate cured that.

Scooby was loved by most who met him. After all, not everyone is impressed by a large German Shepherd coming bounding over to say "Hello!". Yes we went to training, but that was the one thing we couldn't break the habit of. He loved running around and catching his frisbee or ball. He enjoyed playing tag and hide and seek with the kids, and was ecstatic when the hose was turned on. He learnt new tricks very easily, loving the thinking involved as much as the action.

In recent years his health issues caught up with him. Since New Year this year he has had difficulty controlling his back legs. We were hopeful that, as in previous occasions, it would right itself after a period of rest. Sadly this was not to be.

On Monday of this week I took him to the vets, using the car for a journey of less than a quarter of a mile. He managed to half fall off the ramp out of the car, reversed back into the boot and refused to budge. The vet came out to see him and make sure there was no obvious damage. Then we had 'that talk' about how we were counting in days and maybe weeks, rather than weeks to months. I crossed my fingers and hoped that once again he would prove her wrong. Last may the vet had predicted that making his birthday in October would be pushing it and Christmas was really hoping. My boy proved her wrong then but not this time.

Yesterday he seemed to get worse but I put it down to jarring himself the previous day. Today he cannot walk at all. His back legs won't hold him up and he can just about manage to stagger/drag himself a couple of feet before it becomes too much effort. He has eaten his food wherever he is lying, but has now stopped accepting liquids. He hasn't been outside for toiletting since 6.15 this morning. He is just about managing to roll from one side to the other, by the radiator 'cos it's warmer. It is time!

By 6.15 this evening he will be chasing around that big field in the sky, pain-free and with all the stamina in the world. We will be grief-stricken to lose an amazing friend. Goodbye my gentle giant!

Scooby Doo

R.I.P.

28/10/98 - 21/01/09

My baby is 10 and other breaking news

Scooby celebrates his 10th birthday today. Regular readers may remember back in May (I think) that our vet suggested he might not make it this far and most likely wouldn't make Christmas. Well, he's intent on proving her wrong. Today is a sunny day so he's full of life, energy and bounce. On wet days it's an effort to do anything.

Also today saw the first frost of the coming winter. It's all gone now but at 7.30 this morning the roofs were white and the car windscreens were iced over.

Speaking of cars, I now have a Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 with a tiptronic gearbox sitting on my drive. It's my courtesy car till my Merc is returned all shiny and new. This Corsa is a 58 plate with a mere 400 miles on the clock!

K & D are off sailing with Explorers this week. Had the leader on the phone at 8.30 this morning saying K wanted to come home. I told him, and her, that I couldn't come and fetch her as I was waiting for the garage to fetch my car and bring me a courtesy car. The leader has transferred her to the smaller boat for today to see if her stomach will settle. Otherwise we face a long trip to Lymington or Poole to fetch her this evening. I did state that I would prefer her to finish the week out but we'll see.

Not much happening

Just thought I'd check in.

The kids are off on camp till Sunday - peace and quiet reigns.

Scooby is on antibiotics again. This recurring superficial pyoderma is a pain. His appetite will go and it will be 'interesting' trying to get all his pills down him - the ones that go on his food will be untouched otherwise.

Thank goodness today is a little cooler. This hot weather is not doing my sense of humour any good. I have lumpy skin but it's not glaringly obvious like it usually is at this time of year.

Gammon, egg and chips for tea tonight.

Slugs and snails

We've all been busy in the garden.

D likes to grow tomatoes but gets annoyed when the slugs eat the plants. This year he's planted some tumbling tomatoes in hanging baskets to try to beat them, along with planting some French marigold to dissuade the aphids. He also found some hanging basket strawberries - now all he has to do is work out how to keep the birds off his fruit (when we get some).

I've planted some herbs in my new border. A word of warning here - the Curry plant is rather pungent and the smell clings to you, even after a nanosecond of contact. My car smells like last night's take-away. They're all in the border now so we'll see if the slugs leave me any.

I don't enjoy planting things only for pests to destroy them. Because of Scooby I can't use slug pellets. I've tried saucers of beer but they seem to prefer my green offerings instead. Why can't they munch their way through weeds instead, there's plenty of ivy that could do with eating up!

Change of plans

Tomorrow I should be going up to Nottingham for the 25th anniversary of leaving school. A was going to take the kids to Bristol for their English exam. Instead I'll be doing Bristol and not going to the party.

Why? Well I'll have to take Scooby with me and although he travels well he doesn't like staying away overnight. In fact he's ready to come home half an hour after we get there. It doesn't take long for him to stop eating properly. As most of his pills need food/are served with food, he needs to eat. Also the cost of petrol these days is getting silly. And K is sitting her first proper exam tomorrow and is quite likely to need lots of emotional support. A can do it but he's not as intuitive. So, my job is to be here.

Wow!

I staggered into the bathroom at 7.45 this morning, looked outside and thought "What a miserable looking day". It was misty and the ground was wet. So I went back to bed.

A wandered in bearing a cup of tea at 9.00 and told me he'd had to clear off the hot tub lid. I asked him if it was still raining, and he said he'd cleared 2 inches of snow! He got my attention straight away.

A built a snowman with Scooby's help. Scooby shouldn't have been out in it really, but this may be the last snow he sees and he loves to romp around in it.

Strangely enough the kids were up, dressed and out very quickly this morning. D has gone into Southampton to Games Workshop. K went out for a snowball fight and came home at 12.15, minus her door key which fell out somewhere - she's going back out soon to find it.

Now, at 12.50, it's cold but the snow is melting fast. It never lasts long here :-((((

The beginning of the end

Over the past week or so we have noticed Scooby's rear legs have developed a mind of their own. We all laugh at Tom & Jerry when their legs are all over the place, but it's not so funny when it happens in front of you. He suffers from hip and elbow dysplasia, arthritis, iffy skin, degenerative disc disease, and possibly degenerative myelopathy. The latter has no diagnosis, it's just what is left after unsuccessfully treating whatever else it might be. I am hoping against hope that he's just tweaked something and will improve over the next week or so, but realistically A & I are preparing ourselves for the worst.

The vet has said that making it to Christmas is expecting a lot. She is going to contact the orthopaedic/neurological specialist who did Scoob's dorsal laminectomy two years ago. This operation involved removing part of on vertebra and all of one ruptured/protruding disc. He recovered well from this, the only lasting side effect has been his tail hanging slightly off centre.

Back in October Scooby had some more x-rays and MRIs done. These showed that scar tissue is forming at the operation site and he has another pinch point developing in the spinal column up near the neck. At 9 he is too old to go through that sort of surgery again. Plus the bill for the last operation, inlcuding all the diagnostics, was over £4,000. Needless to say the insurance company have said no more spinal/hip/nerve coverage - is fair enough really, our premiums will never amount to the £4,000.

So my boy is growing old disgracefully. At the vets there is a wallchart for dogs ages. It's not 7 dog years per human year. This is just an average. Small dogs age more slowly than big dogs. Scooby's 9.5 years make him nearly 85. When you think of it like that, his lifespan doesn't seem so bad.

It hurts like hell to think about though.

Because he's worth it!

For over a year now our German Shepherd, Scooby, has had on/off skin problems. He's a GSD so it should be no surprise to me really, as they are prone to that sort of thing. He gets big red weals all over 'down there' and the skin goes dark brown and leathery looking. When it's bad he licks at it a lot.

Scooby has had lots of doses of antibiotics - the spots can get infected if his licking is too vigorous - and no matter which brand he has they affect his appetite. He goes right off his food, which isn't a good thing as some of his medications for his arthritis and dysplasia get put on his food. So he's not been getting enough of them either, with the knock-on effect that he's a little more ungainly when walking.

Two and a half weeks ago I took him to the vet as this rash was back and it was really bad! It seemed to have appeared almost overnight. Since then he's been on more antibiotics and will need to be on them for at least another week and a half. These tablets alone are costing me £145! I already spend about £100 per month on his other must-have medications and the insurance will no longer pay out for them. We've reached our funding limit for that condition, £4000, as two years ago Scooby had a vertebra removed as it was degenerating and pinching on his spinal column.

This morning I was checking him over and noticed a new crop of spots. The rest of the skin in that area was healing nicely so it was back to the vet. Now I have to administer Fuciderm cream, Hibiscrub, and OTC anti-histamines. If that little lot fails to settle it Scooby will have to go to the main vet hospital and have some tests for allergens. This will mean him having an anaesthetic, and at his age (9) it comes with risks. (sigh!) Then he can have some whizz-bang medicine which is known to help allergic skin conditions. He will need it for at least a month and it costs £400+ per month! What's the betting that skin problems will become excluded once his policy renews in November. And I can't even change insurance companies because they'll just exclude anything we've already claimed for anyway. Aaarrrgghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But he's cute and adorable, and worth every penny.