We’ve had a pretty good week with Shadow since switching back to the 8 hour Keppra and beginning the holistic treatment.  Our mellow little girl has definitely come out of her shell and has started to act like the bratty, ornery, into everything Husky puppy that she is.  It’s actually really funny, though the cats don’t really think so.  She’s started chasing them a bit more, so they kind of hate us right now.

Our perspective on life in general has definitely changed a lot over the past 2 weeks.  We see the little things that everyone else takes for granted with their “normal” dogs, and we cheer for her.  She caught a tennis ball for the first time last night, and it was a huge deal.  She counter surfed the other day, and I definitely did a little dance before scolding her to get down.  She’s now figured out that if she grabs something she’s not supposed to have and then runs, that it’s a really fun game.  Some of these things we wanted to strangle Ghost for 2 years ago, and now we’re thrilled that we get to deal with it again.

She’s been doing so well that we decided to have a play date and see how she did.  So we invited Ghost’s friend Khuno over to play, and for the most part things have been great.  We decided to let the big kids go run off some steam in the back yard before letting Shadow out, and unfortunately shortly after Shadow went out to join them she had a small seizure.  It only lasted about 30 seconds and mostly involved her head twitching, and she popped up and resumed playing like nothing ever happened.  We talked about bringing her in, but decided to let her keep playing and see how she did.  Khuno is still over (the guys are out tinkering with cars while the dogs play), and so far she’s been totally fine.  She’s been going and resting when she needs, but also running around and giving the big dogs a run for their money.  So what do we do?  It appears as though activity/stress are her triggers.  She’s a Husky, she wants to be rambunctious and romp around with Ghost.  We want to take her on walks and hikes, but we don’t want to keep inducing seizures if activity really is her trigger.  We want to let her be as normal as possible.  I have a vial of Rescue Remedy, I think I’m going to mix that with some all natural vanilla ice cream and give her that before a walk or something this week and see how she does.  If it works, I will probably try pushing the envelope a little bit so we can figure out what her limits really are.  It just sucks feeling like every time we think we’re getting somewhere, we have another little setback.  We cheer for her little victories, but are crushed every time she has another seizure.  Is shunting the answer?  I don’t know.  I don’t want to put her through that, but if that’s what she needs then we’ll make it happen.