Last Wednesday, January 4, I took my little Furgii to get her semi-annual checkup.  She passed her physical examination, and all of her blood work and other bodily function samples came back negative.  This, of course, was simply awesome.

But then came this week.

On Sunday, the 8th, I came home from work to hear Furg making noises that were “snorty”, like she was having trouble breathing.  Someone came up with the description of a “reverse sneeze”, and it’s as good a description as any I could come up with for it.  She wasn’t doing it all the time, but fairly often.

She also tends to wake up in the night and move around a lot.  At one point that night, she had gotten up, resettled, and was shaking.  Shortly after that, she got off the bed and went to a corner of the room to lay down.  She has a dog bed in the bedroom, but that’s not where she chose to go.  She went to the other side of the room, to an area she doesn’t generally go.  That really freaked me out, because my Mother’s poodle died when I was growing up, and the dog had never been in the dining room unless he was passing through to another area of the house.  He never stayed in the dining room.  When the poodle died (of old age), he went to the dining room to do it, like he had pre-designated that area for that purpose and avoided it until the time came.  This is what I thought of when Furgii went to that corner.

I called out of work Monday, and took her to the vet.  After listening to her lungs, trachea, and nasal passages, the exam yielded nothing out of the ordinary.  I was told to give her some Benadryl for 3 days to see if it was an allergy causing this.  I had vacuumed up the apartment (which I admittedly hadn’t done in a bit through the holiday chaos period) in case it was from dust.  I also cleaned the tub in case there was some kind of mildew that wasn’t visible causing this(ditto).  By Wednesday, the 11th, she was dry heaving, but not doing the snort thing, and Thursday yielded an end to the hacking but instead a persistent dry, guttural cough was the symptom of the day.  We returned to the vet.

After all airways and lungs still showed nothing abnormal, it was theorized that it may just be Kennel Cough, which could go away on its own, but it could also be from some form of infection, so The Furg’s now on an antibiotic for 10 days.  One day seems to be making a huge difference.  There was some coughing this morning before I went to work, but almost nothing since coming home.  That, and her energy had returned; during the week, the usually always-ready-to-play Furgii was very subdued.  She would start to play on instinct and then quit, with her tail making curious poses rather than curled upward and over her back like normal.

But then the worst of it came.  I wrote in an earlier post of the seizures she experienced in my first 2 weeks with her but that the foster home had not seen, as well as the theories on what may have caused them.  Around 3:30, I looked from my computer to see her in the midst of another one.  I had weened her off the phenobarbital as of October 29th, and there was no recurrence of seizures or evidence of any such events happening in my absence.  But there she was, having the 3rd I’m aware of and first since those first 2 weeks a year and a half ago.

I took video of it on my phone, and got 4 minutes of footage before she returned to normal, and I started shooting about a minute after I’d noticed the seizure.  Thus it was at least 5 minutes long, her previous ones being 15-20 minutes each.  From the point I had recognized what was happening, she was definitely seeing her environment and could move her head (the previous 2 events, she was completely locked except for a Stevie Wonder-like swaying).  She tried to get up, and her left paw was locked initially before she moved a foot or so and laid down again.  That was when I started filming.  After the 5 minutes, it was over, and my Furgii was back, as if nothing had happened.

I had hoped that this was all behind her, and I hate having to put her back on that medicine.  It definitely changed who she is as a dog, I believe.  But I took my risk with her health by seeing if she could do without it, and I lost that gamble.  I’m so grateful she doesn’t seem to have paid for it long-term.

So, the whole week leading into Friday the 13th was bad enough, but today, Friday, was naturally the worst.