A very long night
This week started out a bit rough, I don't like the time change and having to adjust an hour so I'm usually groggy for a few days while I adjust. Add to that we're very busy at work so I'm in 2 hours early every day and Monday was a very long day. That should have been the worst of it but seems it can't be that simple here. We went to bed last night and I was reading in bed for a bit before going to sleep and hear the sound of nails on the metal track for the closet doors, I got out of bed thinking Lizzie managed to tangle herself in her blanket and she was freaking out being confused over being stuck but it was not that simple.
Tried to pick her up to extract her from the blanket and she began to flair around, by this point Jay was awake so I asked him to turn on his bedside light thinking the light would help reduce her confusion but once it was on something completely different. As I was holding her she left leaning to one side and she is not a dog who likes to be held so she was upset and wiggling around to get away, then we saw her eyes which were rapidly moving side to side and she was drooling all over me. She was not confused, this was much worse and was leaning toward looking like one of Indiana's seizures. Then just when it seemed like she was calming it got even worse, she got sick and I set her on another blanket while I was passing Jay the towel she'd been sick on and she just laid there and wouldn't move, and her bladder let go. At this moment, looking at a dog that seemed unable to move and losing control of her body functions I was pretty convinced we were losing her. She's 13 and had a very bad start in life. She was breed stock for a puppy mill somewhere in Ohio, she had 10 litters in 5 years at which point the miller allowed a rescue to take her and others under the agreement they didn't look too close at the operation, she's blind in one eye now and losing her hearing at a much more progressed rate than Indiana who is less than a year younger.
We scooped her up and rushed her to the emergency vet and waited for the vet to examine her and sort out what was really going on. While we waited we had the unpleasant discussion of how far we were going to go with her for any sort of treatment. Even after 7 years with us she is still skittish with strange people and places, we tend to side with less is more wanting her to be comfortable and happy but not wanting the road to get back to that point to be misery for her, if the quality of life is diminished after going through a long process of less than pleasant treatment for her we aren't convinced its worth it. If she's going to require an exceptional amount of handling and close interaction even from us after she's recovered it will stress her out and make her miserable but as it turned out it wasn't necessary. We now both agree on where we stand with any extraordinary treatment but as it turns out she had a bad case of vertigo. Canine Vestibular Syndrome was the diagnosis and it was causing a severe case of motion sickness which is why she was flopping over to her side and was unable or unwilling to stand, I'd expect it would be about as fun as the night I drank too much and the room was spinning without actually being drunk and for a dog that doesn't understand what is happening I could see that being immensely confusing hence causing the stress that led to her laying on the floor looking like she was dying. We were told to give her Dramamine to calm the motion sickness and the problem itself should clear itself within a week.
We stopped at a pharmacy on the way home and pick up some Dramamine only to realize that in a city of this size, there is apparently no such thing as a 24 hour pharmacy, really? I grew up in Michigan and there were 24 hour pharmacies and groceries everywhere and in this city that was exponentially larger we couldn't find one. We managed to find the grocery near the house was open for another 10 minutes when we passed so I got her meds and took her home to get her settled.
Here we are this morning, she came out for breakfast and ate just fine then crawled into her bed which was previously next to the wall. As she was trying to burrow she ended up rolling into the wall so I moved the bed next to the couch so at least she wasn't hitting the hard wall and she did not approve of me moving her bed, quite the creature of habit we have here haha. She's still not feeling great I can tell by how she's laying, she curls up when she doesn't feel well, but she's comfortable and is able to walk slowly around the house with minimal toppling over
Indiana is confused as to why I'm home, since I didn't sleep and didn't want to leave her right away to possibly hurt herself in her crate I opted to not go into work today so I could get some rest and make sure she won't cause any further problems to herself.
Tried to pick her up to extract her from the blanket and she began to flair around, by this point Jay was awake so I asked him to turn on his bedside light thinking the light would help reduce her confusion but once it was on something completely different. As I was holding her she left leaning to one side and she is not a dog who likes to be held so she was upset and wiggling around to get away, then we saw her eyes which were rapidly moving side to side and she was drooling all over me. She was not confused, this was much worse and was leaning toward looking like one of Indiana's seizures. Then just when it seemed like she was calming it got even worse, she got sick and I set her on another blanket while I was passing Jay the towel she'd been sick on and she just laid there and wouldn't move, and her bladder let go. At this moment, looking at a dog that seemed unable to move and losing control of her body functions I was pretty convinced we were losing her. She's 13 and had a very bad start in life. She was breed stock for a puppy mill somewhere in Ohio, she had 10 litters in 5 years at which point the miller allowed a rescue to take her and others under the agreement they didn't look too close at the operation, she's blind in one eye now and losing her hearing at a much more progressed rate than Indiana who is less than a year younger.
We scooped her up and rushed her to the emergency vet and waited for the vet to examine her and sort out what was really going on. While we waited we had the unpleasant discussion of how far we were going to go with her for any sort of treatment. Even after 7 years with us she is still skittish with strange people and places, we tend to side with less is more wanting her to be comfortable and happy but not wanting the road to get back to that point to be misery for her, if the quality of life is diminished after going through a long process of less than pleasant treatment for her we aren't convinced its worth it. If she's going to require an exceptional amount of handling and close interaction even from us after she's recovered it will stress her out and make her miserable but as it turned out it wasn't necessary. We now both agree on where we stand with any extraordinary treatment but as it turns out she had a bad case of vertigo. Canine Vestibular Syndrome was the diagnosis and it was causing a severe case of motion sickness which is why she was flopping over to her side and was unable or unwilling to stand, I'd expect it would be about as fun as the night I drank too much and the room was spinning without actually being drunk and for a dog that doesn't understand what is happening I could see that being immensely confusing hence causing the stress that led to her laying on the floor looking like she was dying. We were told to give her Dramamine to calm the motion sickness and the problem itself should clear itself within a week.
We stopped at a pharmacy on the way home and pick up some Dramamine only to realize that in a city of this size, there is apparently no such thing as a 24 hour pharmacy, really? I grew up in Michigan and there were 24 hour pharmacies and groceries everywhere and in this city that was exponentially larger we couldn't find one. We managed to find the grocery near the house was open for another 10 minutes when we passed so I got her meds and took her home to get her settled.
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| Dude, got any cheetoes? |
Hope Lizzie is feeling much better. Vertigo is miserable. Hope you've been able to catch up on your rest too. And thank you for giving her such a good home after such a rough start - lots of people would have just left her.
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