Cause of Dog Collapsing? - Page 1

I wish I'd had this forum available to me at the time this happened, and quite a bit of water has passed under the bridge since then. But, if I can get some plausible answers to what happened, maybe it will help me or someone else in the future.

I'd had my GSD rescue, Tasha, for over 13 years. She wandered into my life one day shortly after some ass**** dumped her on the streets of Scarborough (Toronto suburb) at 9 months of age.

Shortly after my husband passed away in November of 2004, she began to go downhill. In the early spring, she began suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, and was diagnosed with pancreatitis. She spent 5 days in the vet clinic on nothing but IV's and came home a walking skeleton.

I babied her, put chicken soup on her dog food to encourage her appetite, and she began to gain some weight. We still went for a very leisurely walk around the block every night, moving only as fast as her arthritis would allow. She would still chase a ball now and then, but otherwise was pretty much a couch potato.

In May, I went away on vacation for about a week. The day after I picked her up from the vet's, I heard some strange noises coming from the kitchen. At first I thought it was just the cat goofing around, then I heard Tasha whine in distress. I went out to the kitchen, and found her lying on the floor, unable to get up. My purse strap had somehow gotten tangled around her front legs. I removed it, but still she couldn't rise. Her hind end seemed totally paralyzed.

I live 2 blocks from the emergency vet clinic. I ran next door, and asked my neighbour to help me load her in the car, and off we went.  I was a mess. I didn't think Tasha was going to come home from the clinic. As I sat waiting, with the tears pouring down my face, she gamely struggled to her feet, and tried to walk. The first effort wasn't too successful, but by the time the vet called us in, she was walking almost normally! 

The vet examined her, confirmed she had arthritis, and judging by the amount of muscle wasting, guessed she also had myelopathy, or some other neuromuscular disease. He gave her a steroid shot for pain, and sent us home with a bottle of metacam, and instructions to take her to a specialist for further evaluation.

I thought about it. I'd already paid well over $2,000 in vet bills that year. If she did have myelopathy, there was no cure for it, anyway, and I'd heard the medications currently being used to slow its progress are of questionable effectiveness. I also knew that Tasha had nearly reached the end of her lifespan. She moved about the way you'd expect a 14 year old dog to move. She limped a little on one front paw from an old injury, but otherwise got around okay. She could still manage the stairs without much trouble.

I decided to just take her home, love her, encourage her to eat, and keep her joints moving with joint supplements and a daily walk.  She passed away in her sleep 3 months later, just 3 weeks after Ranger came home with me from Quebec.

The paralysis never re-occured. Does anyone have a clue as to what might have happened? I do not believe she had myelopathy, and I think the muscle wasting the vet saw was just due to old age. She never showed signs of neuropathy, like my previous GSD did when she was gradually losing the use of her back legs. She showed the classic proprioreceptor deficit  - when  you turned her hind toes under, she would leave them that way, as she couldn't feel that they were in the wrong positon.

Sure sounds like DM to me. I had a similar experience with a dog years ago and she had the same abnormal neurological response when you turned her toes under.  That was pretty much a tipoff as I recall.   Her back end collapsing was also an intermittent thing so it sounds much like what you are describing.

Judy

Sunsilver----Are you kidding?  The dog is over 14 and you left her at a vet for a week and wonder why she collapses after a week of that stress.  Then you bring a new dog in and wonder why she dies 3 weeks later.  She's 14 years old. You're asking for analysis of symptoms. She probably had a stroke initially......and then the new dog. Sometimes I really have to wonder.  (You asked for help in the future.  A very old dog is going to die soon......what you do that last year will either give you a little more time or speed up the process. You responded admirably to the trauma, but the trauma might have been prevented.) There's not much any of us can do when dogs reach a certain age.  All the analyzing in the world can't change the fact that something has to take them.  
 

Sorry I was so blunt, Sunsilver.......but I read a thread where someone was asking advice on the search process.  Seems like a nice guy......mentioned he had a female GSD and a 15-yr old corgi.mix......who's not left long for this world.  Can't see a faster way of sending that old companion into doggy heaven than with the addition of a newer, younger model. (New life can be breathed into an 8-yr old........a 15-yr old will smother.) 

Judyk, you misread my post. It was my previous dog that had the neurological problem, where she didn't straighten her toes out if you turned them under. Eventually, she was no longer able to walk at all, and had to be euthanized. Tasha never showed those symptoms.

And yeah, I was aware that she was going to go soon, which is why I refused to have her poked and prodded by yet another veterinarian, to determine why she'd collapsed. I'm not questioning why she died, but if someone had ever had an incident like this of temporary paralysis of JUST the hind legs, which passed off and never returned. My purse had been hanging on the back of a kitchen chair.  And actually, I made a mistake. The strap  was NOT wrapped around her legs, but just one paw was caught in it.  Could a sudden twisting of the spine cause something like this?

LMH, I kept a close eye on things when Ranger came home with me. He was not allowed to be alone with her without supervision. He'd had an older, arthritic female as a companion in his previous home, and he was quite gentle with her. She actually started to eat better and show more interest in life when he moved in with us. I don't believe he helped push her over the edge. She was being boarded at the vet clinic when she died, and I think the stress of that was more to blame, that plus her age. And yes, I DO feel guilty still.

You're right, I did misread that paragraph.  Brain drain. Sorry.

Judy

The dog's temporary paralysis could have been a pinched nerve.....or just arthritic, weak legs giving out after a week of immobilization at vets, Sunsilver.  I wouldn't believe any major disease was even presenting itself with the 'once' displayed symptom, either.  As to Ranger----I won't go there again and realize my post was upsetting.......  None of us can go back.....only forward.  You have a couple of nice dogs now.....seemingly with no problems.  Enjoy those worry-free years.

 Sunsilver,

In my opinion, It is highly unlikely that the dog had DM or any neurological condition when she fell. You probably would have noted signs in advance of the fall if she did. A simple explanation was she fell, was exhausted trying to get untangled and had trouble getting up. She might have tweaked a nerve too, and there are other reasons why the paw can be turned and not quickly return. It takes an expert to sort that out. There are possible explanations, but they are simply guesses as well.

She might have had an inner ear issue that caused her a balance problem that was mistaken for not being able to get up. She could have had a transient ischemic problem in her brain or a cardiac arrhythmia or a petit mal seizure (*and you just thought it was about the purse), but the good news was that she got better and whatever it was did not happen again. You probably never will know for certain. And had she lived longer, you might or might not have seen this. I once had a dog who was very old and this same thing started happening and I realized it was time to say goodbye.

On the subject of new dogs with old dogs, I generally do NOT recommend it and generally will not adopt out a dog into such a situation as more often than not, it does not work. But it can work and people just have to know their animal/s. In some cases, a younger dog will bring a little more spunk to the old dog. If the older dog is ill or very arthritic, it usually will not work, especially if the younger dog insists on playing and jumping on the older dog.

As for dying in a vets office during boarding, it can happen. It is something I worry about here in my kennel, especially with older dogs. Last week I had an 11 year old dog in for boarding and it has a tumor on the liver. It is most likely a hemangiosarcoma. When it ruptures, the dog will die in very quick order and there will be nothing that can be done about it. There is nothing to do about it now either except to try to put the dog under for some expensive and questionably effective surgery. So the owners have made peace with it , decided to give the dog the quality of life over the length of life, and told me about it. Of course, my facility is as low a stress environment as they come but I worried about him dying here. Fortunately, he did well here and went home happy.

Dogs do die in boarding and in a kennel near me, supposedly a 1.5 year old lab mix died recently. The owner of the kennel saw that the dog had diarrhea and supposedly told the owner it was "inconvenient to that the dog to the vet". It was dead the next morning. This is a situation that is very, very different than yours. I do not think you should continue to feel guilty about the dog dying at the vet. It was an old dog and dogs, just like people, die. More often than not in my kennel business, I see people who prolong the life of a dog who is clearly suffering, just because they are unwilling to let go. In my opinion, as heartbreaking as it is, the kindest thing one can do when the time comes and it is clear that there is no quality of life for the dog is to euthanize it.