Owe an update

I feel like now I can update and write some good news. We weren’t really sure which direction things were going until about Sunday night.

Rosie has been doing so much better. She’s now walking straight again and eating and drinking out of her own bowl. She took the stairs up to bed last night like a champ. She still has a little head tilt and a little droopiness in the one eye, but even those things are so much better. Her tail is wagging again – although she hasn’t thumped her tail in over a week.

We saw the vet on Tuesday night. We filled him in on everything and he explained vestibular to us. He doesn’t believe that she has the more serious type which is Central Vestibular. Central is caused by something in the brain… a stroke, cancer, lesions, and will not get better. The other category is called Periferal (?) and is usually brought on by an inner-ear infection or the other type is just called "old dog" and they don’t know why that happens. Old Dog comes out of nowhere and can last a few hours to maximum a few days…. the inner ear type can take a long time to heal. Both have no long term side effects other than the remaining head tilt in some cases.

I’m giving all this info because everyone who has a dog should know about Vestibular. I can’t help but to wonder how many poor dogs get put to sleep every year by people who don’t realize that this will clear up in a few days or weeks. You just have to give the supportive care and get through it… It was by far one of the scariest things I ever had to sit back and watch. I really truly believed Rosie was dying. And it was heart breaking not to be able to tell her that she would be ok.

Our doc on Tuesday night looked in her ears with a scope and that was the first time she cried through all of this. He said he couldn’t see her eardrum and it didn’t look healthy in the area of the eardrum. So, he wants us to come back in two weeks after the meds have dried up. An eardrum will grow back if it is damaged and so that should be ok also if that’s the problem. She’ll be on antibiotics for a while, but he finally gave us some pain meds for her and I think she seems much more relaxed now. She isn’t pacing as much and things seem to be getting back to normal.

She still hasn’t barked and I think once she does that we’ll know that she’s 100% feeling better. I’m just so happy that she’s getting better and we are seeing our happy girl back again! 🙂