Just
before Easter of 2007, we went on the website for the SPCA of Western
Quebec. We saw a beautiful border collie named Minus looking back at
us. We went out to see him on Easter Monday but they were closed. Two
very helpful young women were there and let us take a look at him. We
had our border collie in the car and they looked so much alike and we
fell in love immediately. We were told that he needed surgery on his
front legs or he would be unable to walk by the time he was 5. We
thought it would be a lot to take on and we went home thinking that we
would not adopt him. We saw an article in the paper about a dog
needing surgery (at that time he was called Oreo) and called Jennifer
and found out it was the same dog. After a few conversations with
Jennifer and a lot of soul searching, we decided that we wanted to
adopt him. We went to get him on April 20/07 and when we got him home
we started calling him Myn. He came to that name so it has stuck. He
went in for his operation on April 25/07 and everything went well. He
is a wonderful dog.
On
July 23/07 something very scary happened. Myn started having
idiopathic cluster seizures (he has since been at the hospital 5
times). We have learned to deal with his seizures and we realize how
much we love him. Myn has the most wonderful eyes; he seems to look
right into your soul. Anyone who has met him just wants to take him
in their arms and hug him. He is very cuddly but also loves to run
and play with our other border collie (Cagni, who is 7 years old).
They have a great time together. Myn loves to play catch and gives
the ball back willingly. He knows some commands like, sit, come, give
and upstairs. We still need to work on “leave it”.
I hope
that we can get his seizures under control. The doctors seem to
think so once we get the right medication. Right now he is on
Phenobarbital and potassium bromide. The seizures have never made us
think that we should not have adopted him. You can’t help but
love him and want to take care of him.
On
our last emergency visit to the hospital we made a decision to see a
neurologist to find out if there are any other problems except for the
epileptic seizures. We hope we can find some answers. We went to
Montreal on October 31, 2007. They decided not to do an MRI, the
doctor just took him into a room and ran him through his paces and he
did very well so they don’t believe there is a brain tumor or any
brain damage. He is on another medication to go along with the other
two and this seems to be working well. He had a seizure episode on
November 3/07 but these were different as he remained alert and barked
and whined between seizures as if he was aware that something was
going on. We went to the hospital anyway and the doctor looked at him
and decided that he was ok to go home as he didn’t show any further
signs of having another seizure. We know that they won’t go away but
if we can just get them under control, we will be satisfied.
If
anyone else has gone through seizures with their dog maybe Jennifer
could help us get in touch and we could discuss how other people have
dealt with this.
We
will keep you updated on Myn. We have a lot of people praying for him
and would welcome your prayers.
Update:
Myn is doing great.
He hasn’t had a seizure since December 16/07. He loves to run
and play in the snow. His medication has been upped to three
half pills a day of the Keppra. We are talking with the vet
about giving him some Melatonin to help decrease his anxiety.
She is checking on things to make sure it doesn’t react with his other
medication. As you can see from the attached pictures, he thinks he owns the house. Even the cat (Quinci) isn’t
afraid of him. They get along quite well. Cagni and he are
the best of friends but Cagni is camera shy and doesn’t like his
picture taken so we just can’t get the both of them together.
We have learnt so
much just by going on the Epi Website (Epil-K9 List) and hearing about
other dogs with Epilepsy.
Update:
Well,
four months have passed on April 16, 2008 since Myn's last seizure.
The medication is keeping them under control.
Another big day passed - on April 20, 2008 we celebrated Myn's 1 year
anniversary with us. We bought both dogs a new toy and a new type of
chewy bone. They really liked both. We also bought a cake and Don
had written on it "MYN'S 1ST YEAR". I think the cake was more for us
but the dogs had a small piece. Everything is going well and we are
so glad that we adopted Myn last year. We had a little trouble in the
winter, both dogs discovered that they could walk over the fences into
other people's back yards. There was no way we could stop them, the
snow was just too high. One night Myn got out of the back yard he had
escaped to and we went on a hunt. Thank goodness we found him before
anything bad happened.
Again
we thank everyone over at the SPCA of Western Quebec for this
wonderful little dog. He is such a joy.
Sadly, we have learned that Myn made his journey to
Rainbow Bridge on April 18, 2009.
Our thoughts and prayers are
with Don and Marion through this difficult time.
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