Our Favorite Boy came home from the hospital Wednesday night. We had him home with us and all seemed well, but we were nervous about leaving him home alone yesterday, so we took him back for observation. It was an uneventful day. He is acting perfectly normal.
As I feared, the vet does not know what happened. We’ve ruled out some things, and are waiting for some more test results to come in, but we have no cause yet and, thus, no treatment plan really. This doesn’t do much to alleviate my worry.
We are probably looking at some neurological issue of indeterminate cause, maybe something congenital, maybe the effects of a trauma before we adopted him, maybe the effects of a small stroke. Once the last batch of test results rule out the other theories, we will probably be consulting with a doggie neurologist and take it from there.
Der Kirbenhund is acting just like himself and shows no signs of anything. He’s been playful and happy to see me, doing his characteristic little high-stepping happy prance that we love so much. Guess what? The vet thinks his high-stepping gait is not so much cute and quirky, but rather hypermetric, i.e., a possible symptom of a lesion on his little canine cerebellum. The high-stepping gait reflects him not having a good sense of where his feet are relative to the ground. We love his dorky walk and wouldn’t dream of changing it if it’s nothing more than a silly walk. If it’s a symptom of something more important, well, that’s a different matter, and a bridge to be crossed when we come to it.
A while ago, someone at the dog park asked me about the walk and wanted to know if Kirby had neurological problems. I thought that woman was a really big asshole. MY DOG IS PERFECT EXACTLY THE WAY HE IS! But she probably meant well after all.
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