Dogs are professional heart breakers

On Friday I came home from a fun-filled day of hiding away in the university library book stacks to let the dogs out. Molly erupted from the house, baying and flailing around in the snow like a maniac. Stella came out, too; however, she looked like she might have had a nip at the bottle. At first I thought she was having a hard time walking on the crusty snow until her swaying continued on the driveway. She was happy to see me, tail wagging and generally dancing around - she was just a little clumsy. For Stella aficionados, we all know that she doesn't really DO clumsy. She's excellent at running (really fast), chasing tennis balls and squirrels and pissing Molly off. All of this she typically does very athletically. So, I was a little worried to say the least.

I fed them both and Stella still had an appetite (whew) but she swayed around the food bowl and her collar banged around while she ate. I elevated the bowl to make it easier, but the dizziness continued. I worried about poisoning, but nothing in the house was disturbed. I called our vet and he said keep an eye on her and if things got funny, take her to the emergency clinic. Given her appetite, lack of vomiting and normal pee and poo functions, I decided to keep an eye on her until the morning.

8am Saturday she was still woozy and now these funny tremors started where she sort of shivered when she was moving. A visit to the vet wasn't overly informative; he took blood and said to come back Monday for more tests/assessments. His best guesses at this point were encephalitis, meningitis, stroke or a blown disk. This ushered in a long and painful weekend of watching Stella get a little worse, lose her appetite and her interest in toys. I've spent entirely too much time poking the internet and scaring myself silly.

Today she mostly rested with intermittent periods of crashing into furniture, falling down, and swaying uncontrollably. We successfully walked down to the school by our house and actually did pretty well. It figures she would be most at home outside, mucking around. She fell in the snow a couple of times but she can still jog around and wag her tail (even if it looks like her afternoon martini just kicked in).

I am optimistic that it isn't some sort of nightmare degenerative neurological disorder; however, without thousands of dollars of tests we won't know for sure. In the best case, she has peripheral vestibular disease, which may indicate an inner ear infection and usually goes away on its own in a few days or weeks. There are a few other fun ones such as myasenthia gravis, which has a good prognosis with drug treatment. My favorite is "coondog paralysis," which normally results from coming into contact with raccoon saliva. Again, good prognosis, but nothing to treat with - just time. She got out for a couple of hours on Tuesday during the big crazy storm, so who knows what she might have encountered on her foray.

Without further diagnostics, it looks like the most reasonable course is to treat with a crazy dose of antibiotic (thank goodness she has been healthy till now), steroids and time. I've got my fingers tightly crossed and I feel lucky that I have David in all of this. I really want us to be four in Germany and beyond. If this goes badly, my morning walks (among a million other things) would never be the same.

Ugh.