Day 3928

Dawn is sick. She was fine yesterday, but she woke up this morning very lethargic and didn't want to eat her breakfast. We initially thought she had an upset stomach and might have eaten something bad in the yard. When we went on our morning walk she walked about a block and then refused to go any further. We went back home and she immediately went back to the bedroom. When she still refused to eat anything at lunchtime, we began to get worried. She felt a little warm, so we took her temperature and were shocked when it was 105 degrees. This was serious. We called the vet and made an appointment. When we described our situation, they told us to come in immediately.

Dawn is still under observation. Her blood work looks good, but the vet initially thought that she might have had some sort of seizure. If she did have a seizure overnight, it wasn't like anything we've experienced before. We've had dogs who have had both epileptic and vestibular seizures and Dawn wasn't acting like this at all. She occasionally had a mild tremor in her body that appeared like she was having hiccups. She had some rapid eye movement as well. The thing that scares me is the last time we took a dog to the vet with a 105 degree fever, we discovered two days later that she had abdominal cancer and required immediate surgery.

Each of our dogs has had to deal with very serious health issues at some point during their life. After dealing with cancer, epilepsy, neurological and spinal cord problems, torn cruciate ligaments, and attacks by other dogs, we were worn out. The sadness that comes from dealing with serious and often incurable health issues was one of the reasons that we didn't think we'd get another dog after Dot and Dash passed away.

Dawn is such a sweet dog with such a troubled past that we were really hoping that we could offer her a happy, trouble free life where she could forget her former life. Hopefully we still can. The vet thinks she might have a neurological problem and wants to get an MRI done of her brain as soon as we get her fever under control. We've taken one of our dogs to see a neurosurgeon before. If there is a problem in the brain or spinal cord, it often doesn't end well. 

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Hopefully, we can bring Dawn home later tonight and the vet will be able to figure out exactly what is going on. In the best of worlds, we'll all wake up tomorrow morning and everything will be fine. Dawn has always had some muscle atrophy on the top of her head that you usually don't see until a dog become very old. I've always thought this was strange. Up until this morning she has seemed perfectly healthy though. She routinely gets a clean bill of health when we take her to the vet. This is 2020 though so anything could happen.

Well, it's two hours later now. We just returned from the vet with Dawn and a big bag of meds. They managed to get her fever down, but still don't really know what caused it. The vet suspects that Dawn had a mild seizure last night and might have brain lesions. This is just a guess though. We'd need to do an MRI to know for sure. Other things could have caused a sudden high fever as well. It could be a viral infection. It could be a wide variety of things at this point. From past experience I know that a conclusive diagnosis can be quite difficult. Dawn is eating again though. That's a good sign. Oops. Janet said she just threw up. That's not a good sign.

I'm glad I didn't go to Florida. I'd feel even worse if I was far away. We'll see how Dawn feels in the morning. She's resting calmly now. This is all very familiar territory that I was hoping to avoid for a while.

Rosie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day