Well I guess Wednesday the 15th got away from me.  It’s been an extremely busy month in the last seven days.

So let’s remove the suspense early on, I will tell you that Caesar is still with us and doing okay.  He is still quite disabled but he is adapting and getting around.  He still hasn’t quite learned that he can’t lift his leg on every tree because he falls over, but he has learned how to poop without sitting in it.  His right rear leg seems to be the most affected.  He tends to drag the toe on the ground and swings it to the inside as he walks and sometimes it lands on the wrong side of his body under his belly which causes him to topple.  However, he does seem to have strength in both legs and is perfecting a hopping run a little at a time.  Today we went for a hike on the Erie Canal trail since it was 70° outside and sunny.  In a typical dumb Caesar move, he attempted to jump into the car, which he is not able to do and I caught him before he slammed himself onto the driveway.  He was also a little excited to get to the trail and went jumping out of the car into my arms before he broke something else.

At times, when he loses balance in his rear and flops over on his hip, while attempting to get up using just his left leg he has the tendency to rub his right leg on the ground beneath them and

so now has a large abrasion on his leg.  Today I bandaged it up with some antibiotic ointment and some really good bandage stuff that seems to kind of turn into a cast.  It’s working really well to protect his skin.  And, to protect the bandage from all the mud and dirt on the trail, we covered it with an infants baby sock.  Luckily you buy infant baby socks by the half-dozen so I haven’t decided if I will wash them or just throw them out.  Though I am finding out they collect a lot of dirt in one outing.

But let me bring you up-to-date on what we’ve done.  And I think some of this is in the video, but I’ll go over it here because I don’t remember if I edited it out.  We believe we have an accurate current diagnosis of a particular type of stroke in his spinal cord.  A FibroCartilaginous Embolism.  It’s where some of the jelly in the spinal discs between the vertebrae leaks into a blood vessel and blocks it and causes the nerves to stop functioning.  In many cases, but not all,  it’s fairly temporary for a week or two.  So I have some hope and faith that he will get better.  However, right at the moment his improvement seems to have tapered off quite a bit.  The diagnosis is pretty much a diagnosis of elimination.  We have eliminated any serious blood problems or cancer tumors or injuries through various examinations and x-rays.  His x-rays however,  do show a fair amount of arthritis in his spine and I suspected that already over a year ago.  There are times when we do a lot of hiking and he has to climb up and over rocks and afterwards he will just stand around looking like he feels very stiff and painful along his back.  At these times in the past I’ve given him a couple of aspirin, and that has helped quite a bit.  Of course aspirin only last about four hours so it’s good that he likes to take pills.  Currently we have him on the prescription painkiller and anti-inflammatory Deramaxx.  However, that’s a little on the expensive side costing around three dollars a pill from my vet.  Deramaxx is very similar to Celebrex for humans, it’s a Cox-2 inhibitor so it works on pain and inflammation without effecting other important systems.  That means there are slightly less side effects than things like aspirin or ibuprofen.  I wish he could take naproxen, which is Aleve, because that lasts 12 hours, and its over the counter. But unfortunately it has a fairly shallow toxic threshold, and no vet will give me a safe dose.  And a fatal dose is not a pleasant experience.

So I’m curious if any of my followers who have been following the videos could tell me if they think they see any difference in Caesar as he walks and gets around.  I don’t want to be blinded by my affection for him thinking that he’s getting better all the time if he’s not, and on the other hand I don’t wanna lose hope in his possible future.  So stay tuned and we will see how this drama plays out.  There may be some big changes in the near future and my nephew is supposed to be getting a puppy in another week or so.  So we will have to go over and see this  new puppy and see how it’s doing.

So as always, appreciate you stopping by spending this time with me.  I hope you don’t find this to sad or depressing as I really feel that it’s a part of life for everybody and we shouldn’t shy away from it.  I think the emotions are real and pretty much uncontrollable, so don’t try to avoid them or deny them.  I’m thinking about being a real moron and going to see the dog movie this weekend.  I’ll have to take another box of tissues with me though.  Be safe everybody, enjoy every day with all of those around you.

Rick, Caesar, Dakota