So this is what parenting is like?!

What a night!


I came home from Banana Republic yesterday afternoon about 3:30. Zane too had just gotten home from running errands. When I went outside to get the dogs off the porch I knew right away that something was wrong. When I called June she struggled to get up from her house to come towards me. (Her typical greeting is to meet us anxiously at the door, and jump all over us when we open it). She finally did make it to me after some coaxing, but I could see it took a lot of effort. I scooped her up and took her into our bedroom, and called Zane to come see her. I set her on the ground, and had Zane call her to him, and she couldn’t move. You could see she wanted too, but she just stood there, and shifted her weight from leg to leg. Zane called Banfield, the pet hospital right away, and they told us to come in immediately so Zane dropped me off at the gym for my next shift, and ran up to the hospital as it’s just a couple miles up the road.


My co-workers could see something was bothering me, so I explained what was going on. My boss Jessica (a fellow animal lover, her family has at least four-dogs, and monkeys (yes, monkeys!) to name a few of their pets) comforted me & told me stories of past scares with her dogs, and said the cooler weather had probably just prompted her arthritis to flare. I was satisfied with that, and felt better. An hour passed before I heard anything from Zane.


That’s when he dropped the bombshell that the vet suspected she had developed IVDD aka Intervertebral Disk Disease. In a nutshell,

“Animals with the worse spinal cord damage from disk disease lose the ability to move and to feel (conscious sensation) their limbs,”

according to WSU Vet Med. Daschunds seem to be predisposed to this disease, and the fact that she couldn’t walk was a clinical sign pointing towards a case for IVDD. I can’t tell you the feeling that was in my heart to hear the bad news. I didn’t think it would hit me like it did, but I was bawling within seconds. I called someone to come in and work for me. Bless you Theresa! Zane picked me up within an hour & then we went back up to the vet together to see what our options were.

She vomited in the car on the way back up there. It was this yellow foam + hot dog chunks, which means she’d gotten into our garbage since we don’t feed them hot dogs! She’d already vomited once at the vet office. The doctor said this was confusing him. (Need I mention this was not what I wanted to hear!) She was also shaking violently which the vet said was due to pain. He said there was a slight possibility that she was just having a severe reaction to ingesting something foreign. We felt so helpless.


I asked him what he would do, and he said he would take radio graphs (basically x-rays). Goodbye $200, but at this point we needed some definitive answers. I wasn’t about to make a decision based on assumptions. The x-rays showed nothing, but it did give us some peace of mind at the very least. There was nothing foreign in her digestive tract, stomach or intestines & if she does have IVDD, it’s hasn’t progressed enough to show up via x-ray. So four hours later, we were really no further from where we started, but the vet said that she was stable, and gave us some pain meds & basically just told us to keep an eye on her.


When we got home we just laid on the couch & cried. Just about the time my tears would dry up, Zane’s would start & it was just this awful cycle, meanwhile she just laid there calmly on her tummy between us. She’s only been with us since Easter, but she's become a very integral member of our family!


We set her on her feet a few times during the night to see if she would come to us but she would try, and then her back legs would just give out. It was pure awfulness.


So we wrapped her all up in a bunch of fleece blankets & put her in her little house that zips up for travelling so she would be protected.


We both got up early this morning. Zane went to unzip her house &....... she walked out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She immediately wanted up on our bed so Zane picked her up and plopped her next to me & she snuggled right down beside me in the covers. Johnny came over and licked her head. It was soo precious.


We are soooo relieved, but still are very hesitant. I took her out to go potty, and she tinkled and had a very nice runny movement which adds some weight to the tummy ache theory. BUT, with IVDD being a risk regardless, she is officially going to be babied like nobodies business... we're going to treat her as tho she has it & not let her jump up or down on A N Y T H I N G, and she'll have to sleep in her house during the day when we're gone & at night so we don't accidently bump her & aggravate her (& Johnny too).


“Crate-rest” could be necessary for weeks, if not for the rest of her life, and surgery isn’t out of the question. It would cost a few thousand dollars, so we’re hoping we don’t have to go that route. We have been reading up on blogs with owners of dogs in similar boats, or should I say “carts.” Our favorite story is Telly’s. See this story for yourself.


Thanks for your support. Keep sending happy thoughts to Junebug.