A Sad Tale of Bad Breeding

We're living with a mystery, but it's beginning to become more clear. Mackey and Sydney have something wrong with their brains. This isn't just me being sarcastic, it's starting to become more obvious that both girls have some brain damage.

They seemed like normal pups in the beginning, though there was some obvious misinformation on the part of their breeder. He claimed that they were Brittany Spaniels, but it's become pretty clear that they are Beagle/ Dachshund mixes. He also claimed to be a reputable breeder that had an accidental breeding. The accidental part is probably true, but he was no reputable breeder. That will become clear as the story goes on.

Our first sign of a problem came as Sydney started to mature and would viciously attack the other dogs with absolutely no warning. The other dogs could be sleeping and she would lunge at them and need to be pulled away. These attacks became more frequent and more vicious as the scars on my leg  prove. My older, much larger dogs became afraid of her and didn't want to be in the same area, or even walk past her. We started confining her to the garage or the yard  and feeding her separately.

Last November after I had 12 stitches in my leg, I had a talk with Dr B and we agreed there were two options, put her on Fluoxetine, the generic for Prozac, or euthanasia. We decided to give her one last chance and started her on Fluoxetine. We also started giving her anger management classes and she has been doing pretty well. She has learned to wait till the other dogs are inside before entering the garage and she has learned to give a warning signal to the other dogs that she's feeling anxious so they can stay away from her.

Then in January Mackey had a seizure. It was fast and we weren't even sure it was a seizure at first. In April she had another and it lasted a little over three minutes. We were sure about this one. Two weeks ago she had her third and this one was bad. It lasted 14 minutes. Those were the longest 14 minutes I've experienced in a long time. She did not lose conscientiousness and one side seemed to be more involved than the other. The vet wanted to take blood as soon as possible to see if any cause showed up. The bloodwork was normal.

I had a good discussion with Dr B and because we have littermates, and they both have something strange going on in their brains, he felt that something may have gone wrong during the pregnancy. His first though was that the mother dog had spiked a fever on the day the puppy brains were developing and they both had some damage.

Then things took a turn for the worse. On Tuesday Syd had a bad day. She attacked three of the other dogs. We kept her apart after that and when I sat down to talk to her, she started trembling and wouldn't look at me. The next day she was a little growly but we were careful with her and had no incidents.

Yesterday Rob had all the dogs outside in the morning, then I heard him yelling my name. I ran to the garage not knowing what to expect. He was alone with Syd and she was vomiting over and over. Her gag reflex seemed to be stuck and her body was jerking as she tried to vomit more. I called the vet, but then we decided to rush her over there. We thought she had been poisoned.

When Dr B examined her, he asked about plants in the yard. We went thru the list on the Poison Hotline and the only one I found was a vine that climbs the fence. None of the dogs have ever shown any interest in it, but it was a possibility. She was vomiting up plant material and hairballs.

He gave her an injection of Atropine to fight anything toxic she might have consumed and an injection of Cerenia to control nausea. He wanted us to leave her so he could watch her. We had just gotten home when he called and asked if her could draw blood. The blood test was normal but she was having involuntary jerking motions so he gave her Midazolam to calm those.

After a couple hours she seemed to be almost back to normal except for some tremors. We brought her home and gave her some valium and fed her a small amount of food. She kept the food down but had another bout of trembling and jerky head movements. She got very upset when I tried to crate her so we let her sleep in a pen in the garage overnight and this morning she seems fine.

Dr B called this morning to check on her and told me that I win for the most mysterious ailment in a dog. He said he couldn't stop thinking about it last night and did some research and he doesn't think it was a toxic substance.

Because Mackey is having unusual seizures and they are sisters, he now thinks that what Syd went thru yesterday may have been a seizure too. We're adjusting Syd's meds, cutting down on the Fluoxetine and if she continues to have these strange episodes, we may try both girls on seizure meds such as phenobarbital or potassium bromide.

We already thought the mother dog may have been sick but now he thinks the puppies may have been exposed very early, perhaps thru the mother, to distemper. He has seen other cases where young pups survived distemper, only to have neurological symptoms occur later.

We may be able to help Mackey with her seizures, the prognosis for Sydney is in question.