Sally’s Struggles

This little sweetheart came to us last fall from an animal control facility in Georgia. At the time, we wrote on the blog:

“Sally had been found wandering as a stray. She was very old, emaciated, and had a neurological condition that caused her to wobble when she walked, sometimes falling over. She was heart worm positive, too. Her chances of adoption were close to zero. The rescue group asked if we could take her, too. We said yes.”

Her mouth was also a wreck, full of sores and inflamed gums and rotting teeth — one of the worst cases our veterinary dentist had ever seen in his long career.

So the team at our veterinary emergency and specialty hospital in Burlington went to work. First, our internal medicine specialist ran a battery of tests on her — blood work, X-rays, abdominal ultrasound, and echocardiogram. Then he began Sally’s months-long treatment for her advanced case of heartworms.

Only once she was successfully past that treatment, and her heart was judged sufficiently healthy enough, could she then undergo her extensive dental. And extensive it was: Sally was under anesthesia for nearly six hours. The veterinary dentist had to remove almost all of her teeth except for a couple of canines in the front of her mouth.

Through all this time her wobbliness had remained pretty consistent. She could get around quite well on her own — in fact she loved zooming across the yard — bobbing and weaving as she went. She occasionally tumbled over, but could pick herself up and keep going.

During her stays at our specialty hospital in Burlington the neurologist had examined Sally a couple of times, but couldn’t determine what was causing her wobbliness. (At that point we hadn’t done an MRI yet.)

Over the past 25 years we’ve had more than 10 animals with cerebellar hypoplasia, which is a neurological condition they’re born with and causes them to be wobbly and unstable, with varying degrees of severity. Sally doesn’t actually act like them. By that I mean we’ve consistently seen that CH animals:

— Go absolutely still when we pick them up. Sally usually continues to bob and weave, and often just wants to be set down.

— Use their tails for balance, keeping them up in the air and moving them around to help steady themselves as they walk/wobble. Sally’s tail is almost always down, and usually tucked between her legs.

— Remain stable in the degree of their wobbliness once past the puppy/kitten stage. They tend to get more stable as they grow up, with their brains learning how to achieve better balance. We’ve never seen a CB animal’s symptoms get worse once they reach adulthood.

And on that last point:  One morning last month Sally deteriorated all of a sudden. She was much less stable, falling over more often, and bobbing so much it was difficult for her to remain still enough to eat and drink without assistance.

We rushed her to the emergency room at our veterinary hospital in Burlington. Fortunately the neurologist was available that morning and able to see Sally again. A few hours later, Sally was undergoing an MRI of her brain.

Frustratingly, the MRI didn’t yield any definitive clues as to what caused Sally’s symptoms to suddenly worsen, nor did it point to an original cause of her neurological deficit. But the good news was that there was no sign of a brain tumor or major new stroke. A cerebral-spinal fluid tap didn’t give us a clear indication either, though like the MRI it meant we didn’t find things that could be worse.

So we don’t really know what happened, other than there was some kind of new “event” somewhere in her brain or central nervous system that couldn’t be detected in scans or other tests.

After three days in the hospital, I brought Sally home. She seemed to rally over the next couple of days, and we thought she was bouncing back. But then she began reverting to her more compromised condition. She’s been like that since. In other words, she’s stable but at a much more wobbly level.

To accommodate her increased instability, we need to do a number of different things.

We now have to hold her while she drinks.

When we take her out to the yard, we stay with her because sometimes she now has difficulty righting herself and getting up again. We hover over her and make sure she’s okay. But make no mistake … she still loves to cruise around the yard!  Despite the real effort it takes, she wants to get up and go. We just admire her spirit so much.

Feeding her had become a problem because she wobbled so much — even while laying down to eat — that she could keel over on one side or the other. Her increased head tremors in themselves made eating more difficult, and it now took her a lot longer.

But we found a solution for this: We figured out that if we “sandwiched” her in a bumper bed — with the bed itself bolstered on both sides for stability — and blocked her food dish to keep it still while she ate, Sally could do so much better.

I took all these photos this morning around her breakfast time. In the photo at the very top, eager to eat, she had climbed down off the big foam bed in the back to try and get closer to her feeding set-up. She was waiting for the dining room staff to bring her meal out.

Here she is right after I put the food dish in front of her.  By hovering over her with the camera, I was making her a bit nervous, which is why she was looking at me like that:

It’s amazing what a difference this made for her. She can eat in a fraction of the time now, and also gets less food spilled. (Much to the dismay of Daisy and Georgie, both of whom loved to rush in afterwards and lick up everything Sally spilled around her feeding station.)

Despite her struggles, Sally is still full of energy and still has a zest for life, as hard as it might be. As long as she’s up for it, so are we!

—

Just a side note:  someone is bound to ask about whether a wheelchair would help Sally. We don’t think so. Again, based on our experience with dogs who need mobility assistance, it is dogs who are paralyzed and unable to walk on their own who truly benefit from — and enjoy — their newfound mobility in a wheelchair. It’s liberating. But dogs who can still walk on their own, despite however difficult it may be, seem to find wheelchairs confining. To them, it limits their mobility and freedom to do as they want. We’ve also found that wobblers still wobble in wheelchairs, which can cause another set of problems (chafing against the straps and frame, increased instability, etc.). We have no doubt that Sally would not be happy to be plunked down into a wheelchair. She’d wonder why we were doing that to her, because in her mind, “hey, I can still get around just fine!”