Our Peruvian Viringos - neurodegenerative disease

I'm going to preface by saying I don't have any good news. We chatted with a hospice vet on Monday, discussed quality of life and came to the conclusion that there was a couple of things we could try but if those didn't work then it's time to let Zara go.  The first one was reducing her anxiety, so we've been playing music in the room during the day and she gets cbd oil a couple times a day to help with the stress of the neighbor's dog barking. The second was her mobility, we've been using a strap with her help em up harness to take some weight off her so she can go on walks without grinding into the quicks on her nails, and have been trying to get her to gain weight. On the plus side she hasn't been scraping her nails as much. On the negative side, she has been rapidly declining with her mobility. The Cerenia helps but Zara is just kind of wasting away. She falls in the water bowl, she falls in the hallway and can't get back up. She's having an ...

A lot has been going on!  Let's start with the health stuff: Zara has been on antibiotics again for UTI symptoms, she was on baytril for the primary bacteria and we finished that. But she still had symptoms so another urine culture later there's a secondary bacteria that we are treating with clavamox. About 10 days into the clavamox she started having times where she'd pant a lot and then get up every hour from around 2am-7am to get water (she'd drink for like 30s to 1min at a time) or wanting to go out. So yet another vet visit, another urine culture and blood work. Bloodwork looks good! Urine culture doesn't show any bacteria growth (thus is good). But the question remains, why is she so uncomfortable during the night? She would also pant randomly during the day when laying down when nothing is going on. The panting has decreased as we progressed through the clavamox treatment, so that's good. She has still had a couple days where she got up in the middle of t...

End of the year! Zara is doing ok, she has noticeably declined since the beginning of the year but that's not entirely unexpected given that she's 11. She's less playful, and doesn't often bring tennis balls back when you throw them. She will play for a little bit (a couple of tosses) and then stop playing. She still gets excited to go out for walks so we've been doing walks and trying to do weekly 2 mile hikes. As always Zara is difficult to put weight on and she's still stubborn and very sweet. We re-evaluated her quality of life, and it has definitely declined since last time. But still not in the "bad quality of life", and she still seems to want to be here. Mostly eats her food, enjoys spending time with us. I will need to start looking into end of life care/euthanasia for her though so I know what's available before we need it. She is a wildcard though and has bounced back before, we never thought she'd make it this far but she is still h...

It's been a few months since the last Zara update. She's still mostly doing alright. New neighbors have a dog that likes to bark a lot so we've started giving Zara some CBD oil as needed (it helps sassy so figured we'd give it a shot with Zara). It seems to help a lot, and after taking it she calms down a lot faster but is still very much present. Unlike the trazadone which kind of makes her a zombie or she just paces a lot after taking it. We've also been hiking every week with her still, she gets excited when we pull into the trail parking lot. And we still play at home but not as much, she'll chase the tennis ball a little but then isn't as interested. We are still struggling with her eating consistently, she will eat pretty consistently for like 2-3 days then eat nothing for a day then eat maybe one meal. So she's still getting the meatballs 3x a day to try to supplement. We did try the entice again and it does make her hungry, just not hungry enough...

First off Zara is 11!!! Which is a huge milestone for her!! Zara is doing better than previously this month, she had a senior wellness exam and everything looks pretty good. She has 1 more day of antibiotics for the UTI (they did a 30 day treatment this time), she's eating pretty consistently even if it's not the royal canin urinary SO food (it's Stella and Chewy freeze dried raw).  She also has a mild ear infection but we got ear drops for that, she's almost done with the 1 week course for the eardrops also. She's got a few little bumps, one on the back of her head and one on her left side near the ribs. But we're just documenting them for now and keeping an eye on them.  Due to the neurological disease we are going to try avoid removing them if possible, since anesthesia is particularly dangerous for her. Her weight is mostly stable, sometimes it goes down because she doesn't wanna eat and some days she eats a ton. When she's back on the tylosin next w...

So the pad stickers are super inconsistent on how well they stay on. I got some grippy socks for zara and those seem a little less difficult to put on her and more consistent. They have grip on the top and bottom so if they get twisted there's still grip. She's still hit and miss with eating, some days she eats really well other days she'll eat like 1 meal. However she does love the satin balls and will eat those at any time, I've been giving her 3 a day to increase calories. No hike this week because I sprained my ankle while sleeping Wednesday night. It's mostly fine now, no bruising or swelling so I'm fine. Maybe a 2 mile hike next week. she's very dramatic about the socks being put on or taken off, but once they're on she walks a lot better.