ferrousland.com - diary archives
Sunday, July 13, 2003
sick mcgarnicle - 07:22 AM
there's something wrong with mcgarnicle. last night, after going to bed, where i left him sitting on the floor at the bottom of the bed, he woke me up at about 1:30am with a short whine when he got up to change positions. he then came closer to the head end of the bed & whined again, curling up with his tail between his legs. he was obviously in some sort of discomfort.
i got up to pat him & he took off into the lougeroom, tail still between his legs, with more whining, where shroom was still up playing computer games & curled up under shroom's desk right near his legs. he's usually acted this way when he's eaten something which hasn't passed qite through & ends up half way out his bottom, so i took a look but nothing seemed to be there. he did show signs of pain when i lifted his tail though.
we tried to encourage him to play to see if he would forget about whatever was worrying him, as he often will if we accidentally step on his toe or something, but he wasn't interested. shroom took him out to the porch to try. mcgarnicle then walked outside away from our view. he stayed there for a few minutes so we walked around the other side of the water tank & he was curled up on the wet grass, just sitting there looking miserable. this was not like him at all.
we decided to take him to an emergency vet place about thirty minutes drive away which he'd gone to a year or so ago when he had a paralysis tick. i got dressed while shroom actually had to pick mcgarnicle up & carry him to get him to come inside.
on the way there, even on the way out to the car, he sort of perked up a bit, but he was still much quieter than usual & still kept his tail between his legs. shroom commented that he was acting like a normal dog finally. heh. poor little bugger.
anyway, the vet looked at him, checked his heart etc, gave him an internal examination, maniuplated his legs a bit, felt along his back & could find nothing unusual with his insides, his legs or his back. the only sign something was wrong was when he bent his tail to the right, then mcgarnicle would wine or show signs of discomfort.
at the vet's recommendation we left him there overnight & they sedated him & took some x-rays. there have been no signs of mcgarnicle hurting his tail recently, although he has been whining a lot more than usual, but we put that down to stress with packing & moving house, so the vet thought maybe it was a relatively rare thing called myositis where the immune system attacks the muscles. the whining & the unusual amount of extra attention to his back end, which has been occuring over the past two months or so, would be in line with this.
we got back home at about 3:45am & i set the alarm to call the vet at 7am as asked. he's taken x-rays, has seen a small .. umm .. something not quite right, but is going to get a second opinion at 8am before prescribing any drugs for him. i'm to call back at 8:30 & then hopefully we can go to pick him up & bring him home.
right now i'm going to go back to sleep for another hour until i have to call again. poor little mate. i hope we can sort him out. 
later the same day
well, sparny is back home. he's not quite with it at the moment from the sedative they gave him so they could x-ray him. the brain has been a bit ahead of the body since i picked him up. when he tried to jump into the car he fell back out onto the ground, the poor little thing. he was staggering around the car like a drunk too & didn't seem to figure that it might just be better to sit down & wait for the ride home to end rather than try to put his paws up on the arm rest & put his head out the window while i was driving. he tried his hardest & got there eventually, but fell back down quite a few times.
now he's lying around having a rest. he was sitting near the front screen door before, looking out with glassy eyes. as long as the pain killer they gave him doesn't make him sleepy he should be back to his old self within a couple of hours, i imagine.
in the x-rays you can see a small bend at the base of his tail, right near his bum, which we're assuming is what was hurting him, but it's funny you know, because a couple of years ago we saw a bend downwards in his tail right about that same spot, which didn't seem to cause him any pain at the time. it must have righted itself on its own, because we didn't do anything about it since he wasn't suffering at all.
they sent me home with some painkillers for him to take for a week with the expectation that he should be as right as rain by the end. if not, then we take him back to that same place, or perhaps we can suss out a new vet a bit closer to where we are around here. signs of improvement also means stopping the whining which he's been doing for a number of weeks which we took as a stress & attention thing from moving house.
i feel kind of bad if the whining was from pain, but he really didn't seem to be showing any sign of pain, just wanting attention, because if we played with him then he'd stop. well, we'll see how he goes over the week.
i hope he is feeling better by now & that his pain in the bum has gone - poor guy!!
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i hope that the dog get well!!!!