I share my home with a special needs dog
Pikku-Karhu on the lawn.
Two and a half years ago, after the loss of one of my older Pekes, a friend called to say he had a puppy for me as a gift. My husband and I visited him and chose one of the three puppies, who were eight weeks old at the time. If you’ve ever had a puppy at home, you will know that they are playful and fun to be around, even though they can sometimes be naughty and chew everything they can get their teeth into.
This puppy was different: something was wrong. Early evening it would seem as if he has stomach aches. I would hold him close, and he was shivering but had no fever. The vet thought he might have reflux, so we started treatment. His condition worsened over the next two days. He started walking like a drunken person, falling over his own feet and then looking very confused as he just lay on his side, legs stretched out in the air. He was eating normally and had no fever, so we went to the vet again; they had no idea what caused his strange behaviour.
At the time, we had just relocated to a small countryside town in the Free State, and I felt I needed a second opinion from my vet in Johannesburg. I showed the video I took of the puppy that morning to the vet’s daughter, who is studying to become a vet herself. She immediately recognised the symptoms and asked me to call my vet and instruct them to test for a liver shunt. I had no idea what a liver shunt was but called for the tests to be done. That evening the local vet called me with the devastating news that it was indeed a liver shunt and that my almost ten-week-old puppy had to be put to sleep.
It was explained to me in a nutshell: that a liver shunt is a genetic condition whereby the liver is not function and that the puppy will eventually die a horrible death.
Pikku-Karhu in the car.
The following day I started calling vets around the country. “The best is to put him to sleep,” was all I heard all morning. I think I must have called 15 vets that morning, and just as I were about to give up all hope, one vet said that he would see the puppy; but he could only do so in two weeks. He gave me a special diet to put the puppy on until he could examine the poor thing with strict instructions to ensure he did not eat anything but his particular food.
Almost overnight, the puppy was already showing improvement. His diet consisted of cooked sweet potatoes mashed with boiled egg, carefully measured in the right quantities, three times a day. This was a nightmare process as now all nine of my other dogs also wanted special food, and of course, the puppy wanted dog pellets too. The solution was to feed him separate from the other nine dogs. This resulted in both my husband and I being involved in each meal time; the one kept a watchful eye over the nine dogs and the other a watchful eye on the puppy in a separate room.
At last, the day arrived for his visit to the specialist vet, Dr Garry Eckersley, in Kyalami, Johannesburg. After a two-hour consultation involving a urine test, blood being drawn (four tubes!) for testing, a sonar scan, and a variety of other tests to examine his overall health, the good doctor confirmed that it was indeed a liver shunt.
What is a liver shunt? The learned people call it a portosystemic shunt: a condition whereby the body’s circulatory system bypasses the liver. Because it is the liver’s function to remove toxins from the blood, dogs (and people) with a liver shunt are poisoned by their bodies.
Let me try to explain how it works in plain English. Regular dog food contains high quantities of protein, an essential nutrient the body needs for average growth in a puppy and to sustain energy levels in an adult dog. When the dog eats, the food goes into the stomach, where digestion starts. In normal dogs, blood from the digestive organs passes through the liver, where many potentially toxic substances are removed from the blood before it circulates through the rest of the body. One of these toxins is ammonia, which is formed with the breakdown of protein in the digestive tract. Because the blood from the digestive tract bypasses the liver in a dog with a liver shunt, the tiny ammonia molecules pass through the blood-brain barrier and cause swelling in the brain cells. This swelling ultimately causes the symptoms one sees in a dog (and person) with a liver shunt.
Therefore, Dr Eckersley’s treatment called for a significantly lower protein intake and to suppress the production of toxic substances through laxative and non-absorbable antibiotics as well as daily liver supplements.
And so, just two and a half years ago, my life with a liver-shunt dog started. I think I have probably had more than 400 sleepless nights over the past 900 days. My life changed forever because to keep my puppy healthy, I had to make sure he did not eat anything that he should not be eating; that includes other dog vomit (and dogs just leave eating each other's vomit), bird poop, insects, cat poop, and all different sort of things dogs just love chewing on.
To do this ultimately meant that I had to deny a dog to be a dog. He can’t be left outside because he could eat something; he can’t be left with his brothers and sisters because he could eat their vomit; he had to live in isolation. That felt unfair to me, so I decided to change my life to give him a better one.
After breakfast, I spend about half an hour outside with him and the other dogs, doing nothing but standing there watching them play and go about their after-breakfast routines. When he makes a poop, I have to scrutinise it: is it soft or hard? If it is hard, it could mean that he has eaten something I did not see, and it could mean the start of an attack in the next couple of hours. If complex, he immediately gets some extra medication in an attempt to stop an attack.
Once the after-breakfast ritual is something of the past, I bring him inside, where he lies in my office, so that I can keep an eye on him. When working on a big project, my husband, who works from home, keeps an eye on him in his office. My husband and I coordinate meetings in Johannesburg and drive from the Free State to Gauteng weekly. On these two days, Karhu comes along. He attends meetings with me and goes everywhere I go.
Lunch-time is strictly at 12noon, whether at home or in a client meeting. Whatever I am busy with at noon gets interrupted by making sure Karhu eats his healthy lunch and takes his medication. I forgot to mention that he eats on a towel thrown on the floor’s surface because I don’t allow him to lick the floor as most household cleaners obtain ammonia, and even in small amounts, it could be fatal.
When working at home, I take him outside at least once every two hours for a couple of minutes. I watch his every move to ensure he does not chew on anything and check his poop.
Dinner is around 5 o’clock, and feeding all ten of my dogs has become second nature to me, although I still need my husband to be close just in case Karhu bolts for one of the other dogs’ food. After dinner, the after-breakfast ritual is repeated once more.
Between dinner and bedtime, we all relax in our hobby room, where my husband and I spend time together before I often retire to bed early in the evening. Karhu is always with me, and I always have one eye on him and the other on my hobby.
Sleeping at night is the same thing; one eye closed and the other open. Before I started keeping one eye on him twenty-four-seven, he often had attacked, and it was always challenging to establish why. He has not had an attack for the past couple of weeks and seems a much happier dog. He enjoys playing outside with his brothers and sisters as much as he enjoys being with me.
I don’t have human children and often find myself conversing with friends with toddlers. This is how I explain my situation: when a baby is born, it relies on its mother for nutrition. The mother (or father) gets up at night to feed the baby, and a routine is established that slowly changes from two-hourly to four-hourly feeds. As the baby grows, it starts eating soft food, which the mother still has to prepare for every meal, of which the interval gradually increases over time. By the time baby is two years old, it holds its own spoon, and by the time baby is four years old, it helps you in the kitchen to prepare meals. By the time baby is six years old, it is no longer dependent on you to feed it. For the rest of my child’s life, I will be stuck on a five-hour feed where I have to prepare each meal.
This is a big sacrifice, considering many people simply throw dog pellets in a bowl before leaving for work in the morning and fill it up again when they get home after work.
If you are not prepared to change your life to give a liver-shunt dog a happy life, you should put it to sleep. One cannot start out and help him improve and then give up because it is too much work six or twelve months later.
Not only does having a liver shunt dog change your life, but it also changes your bank balance for good. My Karhu sees the specialist vet every three months to ensure he is as healthy as possible. So many secondary conditions may develop due to the restricted protein diet. Each visit to the vet costs a small fortune, not the mention the expenses in emergencies that always seem to happen after regular vet consulting hours.
Every day spent with Karhu is a blessing. I don’t know how old he could become; it was predicted he won’t make twelve weeks, and here we are at two-and-a-half years. I know that sharing a home with a special needs dog is hard work and many hours of crying and feeling helpless. Yet, I would not have made a different decision if I knew what was to come. Would you?
Videos of Pikku-Karhu:
http://youtu.be/mZOhXmWDSFA?list=PL431044550ADDEA39
http://youtu.be/cgDDKVT-Ok8?list=PL431044550ADDEA39
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portosystemic_shunt
Comments
Post a Comment