Poor Lars has been living life as a couch potato of sorts for the last few days, forcing me to break out the ‘ol pitty stick.
For about the last week the heat of summer has been in the neighbourhood of 35 degrees, making it unbarably hot for me, nevermind the little man. (more…)
Well its the middle of June and the weather is heating up for sure, meaning that the Bar does not get to go out as often as I, and or he would like.
Some days are hotter than others and on the cooler days I try to get him out as much as possible, and even on the hotter days we have lots of time to get “play time” in as we are early risers. (more…)
It has never ceased to amaze me how time flies by; one minute its spring, next minute its summer, you get the point.
Yesterday would’ve been Luther’s 11th birthday, and the day before that marked the 4th month anniversary of his death.
Some days when I think of him it feels like he is a distant memory, while other days it feels like he just left.
In 2 more short months, it will be half a year since his death and in 6 months after that he will have been gone an entire year.
Wow.
Life can be a bitch sometimes no doubt about it, and just when you think that you’re having a bad day you hear of somebody else whose day seems just that little bit worse.
I recently had to let go of my own Luther and just the other day, heard that a friend of my brothers’ had to make the same tough decision I recently made.
If you can believe it, this is the second time that this woman has had to make the decision to end the life of an active service dog, and making this situation even more weird is the fact that both dogs were of a similar age.
Her dog just lost to her, developed lymphoma at the age of 7 and despite opting for chemotherapy, his health deteriorated very quickly.
He was still in full service to her, a fact that differs from my own situation a little bit.
Luther was retired, and I had already retrained with my current guide Lars, a beautiful svelt black lab.
Oh what to do?
So Luther will be remaining on a large prednizone dose for another week, before being weened down in dosage.
He was supposed to be on his final large dose day today, but due to his tremors persisting, the vet wants to keep him on the drug at the current 20mg daily dose for another 7 days.
As for his stomach issues, they have all but disappeared, meaning that the prednizone is actually helping him, but the shaking is persisting.
According to his vet, the shaking is generally the last symptom to go away once a dog begins treatment so we’re hoping that another week of the higher prednizone dose will do the trick.
He appears to be having nausea also, a side effect of the prednizone because he is taking his sweet time eating, a teltail sign that the drug is making him feel a little off.
All said though, he is definitely doing better, and continues to regain muscle tone in his back legs.
His excessive drinking is gone, and he is begging more and more, a sure sign that the old Lu is somewhere not too far from the surface.
So Lu went for blood work yesterday, and it appears that his pituitary gland is functioning far below the level that it should be.
This is a direct result of his lysodren overdose, but the hope was that by medicating him with prednizone that this would counteract that damaging effect of the drug.
He has been on prednizone for the last 3 weeks now, and although he did appear to perk up, the last few days have been more of a digression for him.
He has also begun shaking, ya know the kind of shaking that dogs do when they are scared of something, something I brought to the vet’s attention yesterday.
According to the vet, the shaking, and upset tummy Lu, and I have also been dealing with can be a direct result of a steroid deficiency in the body, meaning that now, his prednizone dose has been significantly bumped up.
He will be on the drug for the month of December, but in a larger dose, as the previous dose he was on did not result in any movement in his steroid levels at all.
He does appear to be a little more lively as of late though as I mentioned in my last post.
He goes up stairs, not willingly but he will do it, and he is a little more interested in what is going on around him, begging on a regular basis, lol.
So Luther has been on prednizone for nearly 3 weeks and has noticably improved.
He is not shying away from going up stairs anymore, and although it takes him a while to climb a flight, he is doing so willingly.
He is also more active in general, seeking attention, and reverting back to his hoovering ways of old.
I never thought I’d ever miss having to keep an eye on him to make sure he stays out of trouble, but over the last little while, seeing him just lying down doing nothing, I’ve come to miss the lusifer side of Lu.
He goes back for a blood test at the end of the month, at which time I hope he can begin his maintinence phase of lysodren.
So Lu is on his second medication since his Cushing’s diagnosis, the latter of which is to counteract the effect of the first one.
The most popular drug to treat Cushing’s in dogs is one called lysodren, a powerful drug used as a chemotherapy agent.
One of the side effects of this drug is that it can be overadministered, which is what happened in Luther’s case.
During induction phase, the dog is given a large dose of the drug, with that dose being reduced once it appears to be working and reducing symptoms of Cushing’s.
In Luther’s case, the drug began to work but it took a while for his symptoms to exhibit this change, thus he received too much of it.
Now he is on prednisone to counteract the lysodren, and appears to be doing a little better.
He goes into the vet for blood work tomorrow, and hopefully by then they can prescribe him a maintinence phase of lysodren, which he will be on for life.
So lost in the last few months which have been marred by Luther’s deteriorating health crisis, is the fact that Lars, AKA Bar Bar has been, and continues to be a little fire cracker.
Monday was actually Lars and my 1-year anniversary, man its hard to believe that time has flown by as fast as it has.
Lars has matured in many ways since I brought him home, but one thing that has not changed is his incessant need to play and be the center of attention.
If Bar had his own way, he’d play 24 hours a day 7 days a week, skipping breakfast and dinner, in exchange for a game of tug of war or going for a good run.
Speaking of running, I have begun referring to Bar as my little Kenyan because of his love to run.
He is not the fastest dog, but has endurance superior to mine, a fact that makes it easy for him to come running with us no matter how far we go.
Lars’ guide work is, as it was when I got him, steller.
He has a tremendous pull in harness, and has, with some coaxing begun to show a better ability to slow down in “delicate” areas where the bull in the China shop mentality is bad for business.
Happy anniversary little man, the first of many, knock on wood.
So Luther was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease and has been put on a very powerful medication named Lysodren.
It is a chemotherapy drug designed to slow down the ability of the pituitary gland to produce ACTH, a hormone that stimulates the adrenal gland’s production of cortisones which when allowed to flow free in the dog’s body results in all the symptoms Luther has been exhibiting.
He began the medication last Thursday and is currently in the midst of an 8 day induction phase in which he receives a large amount of the drug to “kickstart” the process of killing off tissue of the pituitary to slow things down.
So far, not much has changed with him, and he is on the 6th day of the medication.
The only way he would be taken off the induction phase before 8 days, is if he started losing his apetite, a sign that the drug is working.
I had hoped to see something positive out of him by day 6, but he does have a rather severe form of the disease so maybe it just takes a bit longer.