It’s hard to believe this journey began a year ago today.  We were so happy and excited to have Shadow come home, and definitely breathed a sigh of relief when Shadow wasn’t the hellion that Ghost was at that age.  Little did we know that was a sign that all was not right with her.  This past year has been an emotional rollercoaster ride from hell, with a lot of anger, sadness, and lashing out at anyone within reach.  We were so resentful towards our friends with “normal” dogs, and racked our brains to try to figure out what we had done wrong to be left with a special needs dog.

It isn’t fair.  Why us?  Why Shadow? Have we offended some deity and this is Its wrath raining down upon us?  Whatever the reason, we have fought for some semblance of normalcy this past year.  We deal with judgmental looks and mutters of “it’s just a dog”.  “Wait, you hire a babysitter for your dog?!”.  Whatever, they can take those attitudes and shove them.  Shadow is the sweetest, happiest dog that has such a profound effect on everyone she meets.  She is a testament to resiliency, and we could all learn a thing or two from her.  She has no idea she has limitations, she just runs along following Ghost and eating things she’s not supposed to.  She loves everyone, and greets our Midshipmen and other guests with a full on conversation when they walk through our door.

We’ve learned so much from her, and despite the hardship and tears and late nights in the emergency room we are better off from having her grace our lives.  So happy Gotcha Day, Shadow, and here’s to many more!

So it’s been a little while since I last updated, I was pretty crushed with work for a while.  Thankfully the semester is over, the grading is done, and the grades have all been input into the system.  Now it’s time to shift gears into my summer training blocks, I had a *lovely* 7 hour long planning meeting today.  It was painful.

Anyway, Shadow.   So we’ve been dealing with seizures every couple of weeks since her first birthday, and messing with the Phenobarbital and Keppra haven’t helped.  She gave us a pretty good scare a couple weeks ago too, she had a seizure and then lost the use of her back legs for close to half an hour afterwards.  She did it at daycare again a few days later, so she got picked up and got to spend the rest of that day with me at work.  Aaron and I had a pretty long talk about things, and then Dr. Clarke and I had a chat.  He recommended that we add in another anti-epilepsy med, and so we have added 200 mg of Zonisamide twice a day on top of everything else.  Just like when she started the Phenobarbital, she’s been wobbling around like she’s drunk and having a really hard time on the hardwood floors.  She also started getting super picky right around the same time we started the Zoni, but that may be due to the changing weather as well.  Ghost has started turning up her nose at meals from time to time, and I’ve heard that several of Shadow’s littermates are as well.  It’s pretty typical behavior for Huskies as it starts warming up, and as long as I can get her meds into her I’m not that concerned.

The other part of the conversation that we had was regarding the installation of a shunt.  Aaron and I had a very long talk about this, and looked at the risks vs the benefits of the procedure.  After looking at it from every angle, we have decided not to pursue that as an option for Shadow.  If we had it done, it would restrict her to the point that she’d have to be kept separate from Ghost and not allowed to play anymore.  Hell, she wouldn’t even be able to wear a collar, and the way they play there would be an extreme risk of the tubing being damaged during play.  The other big consideration was the extremely high incidence of having to re-shunt.  Money becomes a bit of a factor at that point (each procedure is roughly $7K give or take), but more than that it’s putting her through that kind of trauma repeatedly.  It’s just not fair to her, and so we’re opting to keep managing the fluid as best as we can through medication alone.

So, since starting the Zoni almost 2 weeks ago, we haven’t had any true seizures.  She had some sort of episode while I was gone on Sunday morning, and we’re still not sure if it was a partial seizure or if she was just zoning out on the meds.  I think she was just zoning out, these meds tend to do that.  She’s been sleeping more as well, which is actually a good thing because she’s not waking me up as much at night to go out.  I got my first unbroken sleep in a while the other day  She also seems like she’s starting to adjust to the meds, she’s been a little less wobbly the last couple days.  That’s a huge relief, it’s so hard to watch her all drugged up and tripping over herself.

I hope we get another good stretch of control…