Drugs!

I often think as come back from the vets with our pockets filled with little white tablets of various sizes, that if we got pulled over by the police in our battered ancient BMW we'd look like the most rubbish drug dealers ever!

And I often think too, that if someone was to look at Ian when we come back from the vet, and he is there sat at the kitchen table, chopping up said tablets into little chunks and putting them in bags, that it is a good job no one else can see because I am sure that this would look highly suspicious.

...and then yesterday, to cap it all, a fly on the wall would have seen Ian drilling out the center of tiny dog biscuits with his drill, ready for adding crushed tablets to the hole in the center and sealing it with flour paste. Just how suspicious would that look!

The drilling out of the center of tablets was for Horace. He just will not eat anything other than his dog food. This week we've tried him on chicken, chopped ham - even dog chocolates. But he carefully eats around all the treats - leaving everything except his biscuits.

It's important he takes his medicine and we can't hide it in a treat, he won't let us put in in his mouth - and given that we now know that his jaw is loose we don't want to force anything. So we've ended up having to grab him, stick on his lampshade collar so we can hold his head still and then inject the crushed tablets and water into his mouth. You wouldn't think giving tablets to such a tiny dog would be so difficult!

But the problem was that this was starting to make him distrustful of us. We'd tried a number of approaches. Ian had tried soothing him first and then popping his collar on, we'd tried just grabbing him when he wasn't expecting it, doing it after food... and while we were successful in getting the medicine into him, there was a danger he was going to distrust us and that would be a terrible thing for the little boy. And given that we've only just got him eating well, we didn't want to stop that by his associating eating with being force fed tablets.

Hence the fact that Ian tried drilling out the centre of Horace's dog biscuits to add the tablets to it.

However, we found that he does get excited at food times when the others do, and does seem to anticipate food. And now I hold him when he eats he is a lot more focused and while he does scatter his food a bit, it's not as bad as it was before. So we tried adding his tablets to just a few dog biscuits and found that he eats them up with those biscuits. I then add more biscuits, so if he was thinking about spitting out the tablets, he doesn't and swallows them with the others. I need to watch carefully, as he does drop things, but so far this appears to be working - and is so much easier than drilling out the center of dog biscuits!

First of the season

I stood outside last night and wondered when we'd see the first satellite going overhead - and one gently glided across the night sky. I am sure the same has happened in previous years - but I am guessing it is more coincidence than them doing a special fly-over to welcome the fact it is warm enough to enjoy late into the evenings sat outside. 

Horace's Treatment

We discussed Horace's treatment at the vet today - or rather lack of it. They showed us the scan from last week and told us a little more about how is brain is affected. There's no real treatment other than drugs to reduce the swelling in his head.

They explained that all his problems - blind, no smell, inconsistent hearing... are how he was born. They also said that while his jaw is aligned OK, the ligaments are long (?) and therefore his jaw is weak. This is why he has problems eating (when he does concentrate enough to eat) and that is all part of the same thing. I 'wish' I could get him to eat soft food. But that's been impossible so far.

He is as he is, and he won't get any better - and we are hoping he won't get any worse.

On the plus side, he hasn't got any worse since he's been with us - and he's actually improved in some areas. Many people only notice there's a problem when their puppy starts to behave oddly. Whereas Horace doesn't seem to have degenerated. He's noticeably better at quite a few things. At the vet today he sat quite happily in my arms for a long time while we were waiting, while in the past he would have made a fuss and been impossible to hold. I can also brush him now, which I couldn't before.

A couple of months ago, I had said to Ian that Horace was like a little baby. I was comparing him with Charlie who is the same age, and how Horace was just a little baby compared to her. And this is quite a good way to think of him.  He's like a little five week old pup. He plays with his water rather than drink it, it skips through his food, chases his tail, he loves jumping on a leg for a bit of a play-fight, he gets excited by things even though he's not quite sure why - and he's nervous by things he doesn't understand, and will scurry back to where he's confident.

Now we know that he has a serious condition, it's changed the way we think of him. Now, it's amazing that he does what he does - before, it was frustrating that he could 'only' do what he does.

I've changed his feeding - again - and now hold him while he eats. The aim is for him to concentrate on his food. And this does appear to be working. Originally I didn't want to do this, as I didn't want him to get used to always being held to be fed, however now we know what we know, this will be a good thing to do.

We're actually very lucky that he adopted the puppy training pads so easily - as dogs like Horace are generally impossible to housetrain.

He will go back in two weeks for a review. I must admit, I got a bit lost at this point and I'm a little unclear as to whether he will continue taking the drugs as a preventative thing to stop any increase in swelling or if he is taking them to see if there is any reduction. But we'll find out in a couple of weeks. Happily, the drugs are only pennies to buy, so if he does have to keep with them, it's won't break the bank.

What would Jane Fonda say?

I am not sure that Jane Fonda would be particularly impressed if she was to take a peek into our patio in the morning - and a good job we are not overlooked!

Ian and I have decided to do aerobics in the morning. We have found this lady on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-30LmvW0S5s&t=9s who has a whole host of different low impact videos. As Ian is prone to injuring himself at the prospect of exercise (so far skipping, running and cycling have all got the better of him), this lady is good because it's walking based and low impact. The videos range from 10 minutes upwards, so there's no excuse not just to do something.

So, imagine the picture - Ian and I jigging round in different directions (one of us is surprisingly uncoordinated), Pirata sat on the well, which is where we have the tablet propped, trying to tap the tablet over - or sit on it, the big dogs all running round wondering what game we are playing, Millie running up to join us because that's what she does, Tinkerbelle getting under our toes because that's what she does... not a pretty sight. 

The only good news is that neither of us are wearing lycra :)

Horace with his lampshade

Well, I have been reading about Horace's condition and it is now quite apparent that he has all the hydrocephalus symptoms, down to the fact they feel the cold more, and Horace loves snuggling under his duvet. Dogs with this are also described as having autistic like behaviour, which, again describes Horace. They are also supposed to be difficult to housetrain, but Horace is excellent at going on the puppy training pad. I think that might be because it was the first thing he knew and just stuck with it. He might not have a long life, but I hope we give him a happy one. Here's a photo of him snuggling and wearing his lampshade.

Horace Goes to the Vet's

Horace went to the vet today to be neutered, and we learned that he is a poorly boy.

I asked the vet to check his teeth as there is something so odd about his eating - as I have mentioned before. Last weekend I tried moving him to meat, but he just spat out the meat and hunted out the few biscuits I put in there. He seemed genuinely confused by the new food in his bowl. So I persevered for a couple of days thinking he would get used to it. But he didn't. He is so small, after a couple of days it was apparent he was going to lose a lot of weight and we put him back to the dried food again.

So I really wanted the vet to check his teeth and to take out any teeth if there was a problem while they were neutering him.

The x-rayed him and his jaw and teeth were OK, so they then scanned him and found he has a "very tiny brain". He has fluid on the brain and would have been born like this. The vet we saw, said that when they looked at the scan, all the vets there were surprised that Horace was alive and functioning because his brain is so tiny.

The vet said the condition could be dangerous if the fluid grows - and we don't know if the fluid has grown proportionately since he was a puppy or if it is the same. Although I don't think he acts any differently and I certainly don't think we've seen a degeneration in him. They will put him on some medication to try to reduce the fluid and we'll talk to the vets again on Monday.

The condition is hydrocephalus and this explains so much of Horace's oddities - the skipping round and losing his food, being comfortable in the little areas he knows, being random with his hearing, absolutely no sense of direction... 

I had got to the stage where I was pretty convinced there was something behind his oddities and I had so hoped it was going to be his teeth and they would remove a couple and he'd be fine. I'd actually said to Ian just this weekend that if we'd had the money I would have taken him to see a specialist to see if there was something underlying which we weren't aware of because his behaviour is SO different to the others, so I suppose it is more of a disappointment that it's something serious than a surprise that he has something wrong with him.

But the good thing is we now know that he really is very special and with his tiny brain he is never going to be the same as the others. I think we'll better know how to treat him. He is a happy pup, and rarely unhappy, so that's what we must try to maintain.

Never a dull moment...

Well, rarely.

Ian and I were sat at the table with Charlie (who has gone into complete sheepdog mode) running round and the table in one direction, Millie running round in the other direction, Wilbur getting excited because he thought there may be some chocolate and Larry in full squawk demonstrating his pleasure/annoyance at a bit of lettuce. It can be quite exhausting!

Charlie is showing no long term damage from her broken leg, which is good. I don't even notice her limp now. Perhaps she does, but she generally is running so it is difficult to see.

Life with Horace continues to be challenging. He is desperately sweet, but he is extremely strange too. He remains very funny about eating - but also drinking. He will only drink if his water bowl is full. And as his bowl is right outside the back door, all the others tend to drink from there too. So we have to watch it. We're getting to know the signs and when he is thirsty he won't settle. It's very strange, because he's obviously thirsty, but won't or can't drink if the bowl isn't full. This is something we're really going to have to watch in the summer.

His food also remains an ongoing challenge. I'm close to giving up feeding him outside as he 'loses' his bowl and then gets lost himself. More often than not I finish feeding him inside on the sofa so he can't get lost. I did try feeding him again in the bedroom, shutting him in there, thinking there would be less to distract him, but he just scattered his food over the floor and couldn't pick it up. He wouldn't eat soft food when I've tried him before, but I'm going to try again as there's obviously a problem with his crunching on dried food.

He hears noises but doesn't seem to be able to work out where they are coming from and he has absolutely no sense of direction. He'll take one step away from his food bowl and will be unable to find it again - without stepping in to it. I think he knows my voice, but he doesn't really react - not like Millie who goes into full pelt running round in circles when she hears me finish a class!

I think that without a doubt, Horace has been our biggest challenge and I think that if he had been our first 'special needs' dog, I doubt that our house would be so full of other animals with special needs. Even with our experience he can be a bit of a worry and I think if we didn't have any experience we would find his odd behaviour quite worrying - even though we do see real improvements in him almost daily.

It's lovely to see the steps forward he makes - and he does make significant steps forward. But we 're currently congratulating him on almost crossing the floor of the living room to Ian's desk - or we may feel pleased that he ate most of his food before getting lost again - things the others picked up in seconds! I can't help thinking that when I say 'well done' to Horace for eating most of his food the others must wonder what all the fuss is about!

But he does seem happy and he does play and skip around. He clambers up onto the sofa and he's started shunning his little bed in the bedroom and climbing onto the chair. He does seem to like company and will snuggle up with the others or sit on my lap, so he's not completely in his own world.

And he is actually extremely good at using his puppy training pad. In fact, he is so good I have put one outside as he will come in to use his training pad rather than go to the toilet outside!

It's going to take time, but it would be great to think that in a year or so's time he was more confident and I read back at these posts thinking how much he's changed!

Labour Day

So, today is Labour Day here in Spain and unusually, it coincides with a UK bank holiday. I've mentioned this before, but in Spain, they celebrate the holiday on the day it falls. So last year it fell on a Sunday, so as shops don't open on Sunday, people didn't have the extra day. But instead, when a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, they have a 'bridge' day on the Monday or Friday and that apparently evens things up over the course of a year. I've never tried to work it out, however I guess it must do so, as people don't complain when a holiday falls at a weekend or suggest the system is unfair. Perhaps I'll work it out one day...

Talking of different ways of doing things, they also work out the number of days in the month differently - they count on their knuckles. I think they count the months with 31 days on a knuckle and the space in between is a month without 31 days. They count on one hand and when they get to the last knuckle they start again - and that's obviously July and August. I've just tried and it worked out, so I think that must be right.

Ian posted a nice photo of Horace and mentioned about Horace attacking legs. This is very funny. He only does it where he feels safe, which is mainly in the bedroom where he has his little bed. When we put him on the floor he becomes like a little demon - lunging at any (human) leg and attacking it. It's play fighting, and very funny, but I'm not sure we'll think it's so funny when we are wearing shorts in the summer.

We've been trying to encourage Horace to attack our legs in the living room too. At the moment Horace isn't confident to go over to Ian's side of the room, so we're trying to entice him with Ian's nice attackable leg.  Encouraging a dog to attack your leg is probably not found in many dog training guides.  I did realise, again, that the trick with very special need pets is to do the opposite to what we 'should' do when training a dog.

I've been thinking about this and I think it's because with a dog like Horace, we need to get him to engage with us, so we need to do things to encourage him to engage, so when we see he likes something, we encourage it (it's made all the more difficult with Horace because he doesn't like food). However, with a 'normal' dog, part of the training is to get them to NOT engage with you. So I guess is makes sense what we do. I know when we had Herbie we used to give him a little bit of food from the table. Something we never do because it would just result in mayhem. However, with Herbie who was completely blind and deaf with an unknown past, we needed to do things like that so he realised that he was with nice people, and to encourage him to come to the table.

It rained at the weekend, so this might mean that there's a strong finish to the asparagus season! Can't believe that it's almost over for another year already...