so bad of me!

rah's 9 month update was earlier this month. now, i know its not a required checkup from u of FL, but we all know 1) im anal retentive and 2) psychotic and couldnt wait until may to check him. besides, berlin and mercury were due for their yearly checks.

so - berlin's echo is perfect, her holter was completely free of VPC's - her health testing is now complete and everything is being sent to OFA for her CHIC number. not because she will be bred (ha, i spayed her) but so that her breeder can benefit from the knowledge and others can know the health of her lines. her littermate already has his CHIC, and the bitch she bred her littermate to is also CHIC #'d.

rah's echo showed only minimal enlargement - a few millimeters. nothing to be concerned about. his holter had 121 VPC's - 116 singles and a very slow run of 5 (he couldnt even call this tachycardia because it wasn't, so NOT vtach!)

so he's holding stable. keep on keeping on. fighting the good fight. he's a good boy and we're going to fight this as hard as we can.

DPCA nationals

the talk of the town is Dr. Meurs, who has announced (And presented at nationals) that she has discovered one of the genes that cause DCM - her test is commercially available and we can now begin the long process of weeding out one of the known genes of DCM.

It's sent the dobe world into a tailspin (as all things do- this community is nothing if not a little reactive, maybe like our dogs, HA!) - do it, don't do it - tell, don't tell - who to breed, what to breed, breed at all -

it brings up good questions, hard questions, easy questions, and just more and more questions.

I'm hopeful with the test - the presentation (which can be seen here:
http://www.ustream.tv/user/DPCA/videos

was really rational and level headed - she did not advocate eliminating any dog that has the gene, but instead using breeding practices to gradually, over the next few generations, eliminate the gene by breeding practices.


she also heavily cautions that this is almost definitely not the only gene, and there is unknown influences that cause the incomplete penetrance.


of course the next thrill was dr. estrada presenting the stem cell info (also at the archived video site) - did a very nice job of explaining what rah went through!!!!!


so much hope in the midst of so much stress.

i just had a clients dobe puppy diagnosed with juvenile DCM at 3 months old. this poor family and this poor dog - she's from kimbertal and is very sweet, but this is heartbreaking.

sadness

the second dog to have stem cell implantation died yesterday - he had gone into congestive heart failure a few weeks ago and he was released yesterday in the arms of his family at the U of Fl.

there's so many feelings about this - not just feeling sad that he's gone, and so terribly bad for the owners because i know what this feels like, but so much nervousness. nervous that does the stem cell treatment do nothing? is rah not going to be helped?

we don't know how much or how long they have, ever. we dont know how long rah would have without it, or how much time dog#2 had without it - we can't say. its so much unknown, and i know and accept that to some degree.

but it makes me sick and sad for all the right reasons, and some very selfish ones - because i want so very badly for this to be some miracle. for everyone, but the ultimate in selfishness is that i want it to be MY miracle. rah's.

the news is GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

rah's holter results are in- brandon called me today and i almost died because he did call right as i was about to step into surgery- i thought immediately something was wrong, he's NEVER called before, almost always emails!!! but the phone call was GOOD! we're down to only 89 vpc's!!!! he had 2 bigeminal beats, no trigeminy, everything else was gravy!! 6 months ago this dog had 5000 vpc's in a 24 hour period and now he's at this - and unbelievably it's still going down (this is 10 less than last time - only 10 less, but it's still less and i believe he did have one trigeminal beat)

so we're off the hook for three more months... and his heart is stable. it's almost good. better at least. he ate a plate of brownies tonight and had to have vomiting induced, it's never a dull moment...

i feel sick

it makes me physically ill to hear of another doberman i "knew" dying of cardio. this dog was rah's age, diagnosed 5 months before him with questionable values and his recheck one month after rah's diagnosis showed definite changes. he was medicated, and today the owners found him in the yard, dead.

it makes me ill for so many reasons, but some of them are so very selfish. im sad that anyone has to lose a dog to this disease.

but part of me constantly compares - is this dog worse than rah? better than rah? how long are they getting? what drugs are they on? is the dog doing well? and try to make some sense of everything to figure out just how long i'll have.

this dog was definitely not worse than rah. his holter 10 months ago had 14 VPCs and 4 months ago he had 26 VPCs. single, lone VPCs.

rah had 5000.
down to 1000, and now down to 100. but a dog just dropped dead (that had significally better holter parameters) of a fatal arrythmia.

sometimes im just so scared, so terrified.

its just not fair.

RIP kheper. it's never long enough.

oh the fun never ends

so rah survived a tooth pulling, he survived stem cells -

WILL HE SURVIVE DAILY LIFE?

rah aspirated water last weekend with a near drowning secondary to black doberman bitch on top of him while "swimming"... in other words, between him biting constantly at the water and berlin jumping on him, he breathed in a lot. he ended up with mild pulmonary edema secondary to inflammation from the water disrupting his lovely surfactant in the lungs and mild aspiration pneumonia. (we wont talk about what the cat did that same night... im going to ask for new animals!!!)

and of course today he runs around my fathers backyard and tries to get in the water (but doesn't really succeed thank god, since he cant get OUT of the pool) but he rips his pads up.

BAD DOG. bad bad dog.

ok, worse owner. rah is officially going to live in a bubble.