Old Dog Vestibular Disease

Shawnee's mom here because Shawnee is not herself right now.  We had a very scary episode yesterday. Shawnee was fine in the morning, ate breakfast, a normal start to a normal day.  Then around noon she started to lose her balance.  Over the next couple of hours everything went downhill rapidly to the point where she was running into walls, panting excessively, drooling and her eyes were darting back and forth nonstop.  I made it to the emergency clinic 30 miles away in record time, in a panic, thinking this was the end.  How could this be?  She just hiked 10 miles last Sunday and was perfectly fine.

They rushed us right in at the emergency clinic.  After a thorough examination, the vet felt Shawnee might have Old Dog Vestibular Disease.  It could be because of ear infections (per the vet, her ears are "pristine" so not the cause in her case) or thyroid (tests still out on that but only to rule it out since the vet says she does not look like she has thyroid issues) or, as is most often the case, it just happens for no known reason.  Fortunately, the prognosis is good assuming she improves over the next 72 hours.  If she does not improve, then it could be something more serious.  So for now it is wait and see.

Head tilting to the right because her world is spinning.

She can barely walk right now and has her hiking harness on so I can help her if she needs to get up.  She will not eat or drink so she gets some canned food blended with water in a syringe every few hours.  When I am able to get her outside, she won't do anything and just wants to come back in and fall into her bed.

Here is a video of her eye movement, which is actually a little better today than it was yesterday but her head tilt is worse today.

Now that I am no longer so concerned that her life is over, I can start obsessing about whether or not she will ever hike again.  I posted that question to a Facebook dog hiking group and the experiences of others is very encouraging - all have said their dogs did recover and were able to hike again. 

I wanted to throw this out there because it is darned scary.  It affects both dogs and cats and you think they are having a stroke.  In something I read a neurologist wrote that the worse the symptoms, the better the outcome.  It's with less severe symptoms that the problem tends to be more serious. 

Later last night, once I started to come down out of panic mode, I recalled having heard about this before.  Then it started to come to me where it was I heard it - Blogville, of course!  So I dug back and found the post - it was Anna's Duncan that it happened to and reading how what happened to him was EXACTLY how this went down with Shawnee and then reading how well he recovered made me feel so much better!  So paying it forward in case it ever happens to your beloved best friend and maybe you will remember having heard about it in Blogville.

Daniela (with a LOT more gray hairs)