Puppies redux?

On the left is Ch Whistlestop John Jameson “JJ”, and on the right is my sweet Ch Stanegate Second Thoughts RN JH WD “Tooey”.

And yes, they are doing It. Clearly, JJ and Tooey both thought that today was the perfect day to try to start puppies.

Tooey went into season on April 23, so this would seem like the right time, just looking at the calendar. But there are no guarantees.

Tooey’s progesterone blood level has been checked every couple of days for the last week, and it is just not rising the desired levels. The vet said that it seems “stalled” at 3 ng/ml. Reading around on the web, I find a lot of variation on what the recommended level is for breeding, but most say that ovulation occurs at 5. So…

On the other hand, we can consider the analog method of making these determinations. While the potential sire is interested in the whole idea nearly the entire time the potential dam is in season, she is supposedly interested only when the time is “right”. Blood test? she says. We don’t need no stinking blood test.

Even so, another blood test will be done tomorrow with results available on Friday. So who knows? Maybe a mix of science and intuition will give us good news soon.

———

Note added on May 10: another tie today. Bloodwork be dammed!

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New and improved coat and nails!

About 2-1/2 months ago, I wrote a blog post about how Cooper’s coat and nails had gone to hell. His coat was woolly and thin, he had a bald patch on his back, and his nails seemed to be breaking one after another.

Cooper’s back looking down from mid-back toward the tail – December 3, 2012

Part of this can’t be helped. Cooper has Symmetrical Lupoid Onychodystrophy (SLO), and with his history of the disease, that means that his nails are going to break no matter what we do.

But they seemed to be breaking more severely and more often than they had been for several years, and plus, that coat! Terrible.

Skin and coat issues sometimes result from infection or inflammation, so we took him to the vet. Turned out he had a mild staph infection, which we treated with antibiotics and daily Murphy’s Oil Soap baths. Once that cleared up, his skin was better, but his coat was still crappy.

So the next suspect? Diet.

One common remedy for coat problems is adding Omega-3 fatty acids. But Cooper has no lack of Omega-3s. Ever since he was diagnosed with SLO, he’s gotten 6000 to 8000 mgs of fish oil every day.

So it had to be something else.

We got a lot of advice from other IWS owners, and we adopted quite a bit of it. (Thank you!)

First off, we changed his kibble. We can’t feed a raw meat diet, as many suggested, unless the meat has been immediately flash frozen, because of the danger that his compromised immune system would not be able to handle the organisms present in fresh raw meat. He had been eating Kirkland’s Nature’s Domain grain-free salmon kibble. Now we switched to Martha’s recommendion of NutriSource kibble, choosing the grain-free salmon version. Plus, we also kept up our practice of feeding flash-frozen chicken wings and Martyn’s vegetable dog soup.

In addition, Deb had mentioned that she gives zinc to her SLO dog. I’d been reading about the benefits of zinc methionine, a highly accessible kind of zinc. So we added two supplements from Nature’s Farmacy Dogzymes: Ultimate, multi-minerals and vitamins, and Gro-Hair, a source of zinc methionine. (I am not affiliated with this company at all.)

We also changed from his former SLO medication regimen to this:

• fish oil capsules, 4-1200 mg in the morning and 3-1200 mg in the evening
• vitamin E, 400 IU, 2x/day
• biotin, 2500 mcg, 1x/day
• vitamin B, super complex, 1x/day

If you’ve been reading regularly, you’ll see that we decided to drop the doxycycline and niacinimide. We just thought that all that antibiotic after so many years might not be needed anymore. (And about 6 months ago, months prior to the worst of the coat and nail issue, we had already started giving him a low dose of Soloxine, a thyroid supplement.)

So now it’s been over 2 months of the new diet and medication plan. What have been the results? Absolutely wonderful. Take a look:

Cooper’s back looking down from mid-back toward the tail – February 6, 2013

His coat is much thicker and curlier, the wooliness is just about gone, the bald patch has disappeared, and the tuft of coat at the base of his tail has even grown back in. By itself, that’s wonderful, but the incidence of broken nails has gone way down, too. Last Sunday, when I did his weekly nail filing, not one of his nails was broken or split.

I hope this improvement keeps up. Come this next weekend, we’re headed to one of our favorite training grounds where there will be some water retrieves. Cooper is happy to go into the water naked if it means he gets to retrieve something, but I’m much happier when he has a lush full coat to protect him.

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Skin, coat, and nails go to hell

Last week, I wrote to the IWS list on Yahoo groups that I had a mystery going on with Cooper’s coat.

He has a big bald patch (maybe 4″ long and 2′ wide) on the top of his back, between his hip bones, a few inches head-ward from his tail. The coat loss is also particularly noticeable on the shoulder patches and on his neck, but also on his chest and between the pads of his feet. Instead of thick, tight brown curls, his coat is thin and very wooly, particularly on his back and especially along his spine.

Plus, overall, the coat his body is much redder than before. And he’s lost his insulating undercoat — not good for a winter-time hunting dog. But his skin is not red, itchy, or warm. There is a little flakiness, but not much. He does not appear at all uncomfortable.

We went to the vet, thinking that this all might mean that he’s needing his thyroid medicine adjusted. But turns out not to be thyroid — Cooper has a staph infection on his skin.

Cooper’s back, top is mid-back, bottom is toward the tail

Then today, we noticed a particularly bad broken nail — one of those split and exploded nails that look like it should really hurt. But Cooper isn’t limping or crying, or even licking it excessively, so again, he does not appear uncomfortable. He just gently licks and chews at it from time to time, trying to get it off himself.

Left front index toe from top

Left front index toe, from side

He’s gone months without an exploded nail. And his coat hasn’t been this bad ever. And then there’s the bacterial infection he had in his right ear about a month ago. I don’t have a clue what’s going on.

At the same time, Cooper’s appetite has really improved. He’s always had an on-and-off again relationship with food. Now, he is eager to eat, and even works for treats (which he NEVER did before). Because of his SLO, he has a few food restrictions, including no grains and no raw meats except that which has been flash-frozen. So he eats fish-based kibble, a little blended vegetables, flash frozen raw chicken wings and, just recently we added frozen raw liver. And we just this week switched away from the Costco brand of grain-free foods, just on the advice of some other IWS owners.

He still gets his SLO regime of medications: 6 capsules per day of salmon oil, Vitamin E, doxycycline, and niacinimide plus biotin and Permaclear. And we’ve just started adding a food supplement with zinc methionine in it.

When we went to the vet last week, she suggested that we go back to the veterinary dermatologist to see if a change in his SLO regimen is warranted. His whole coat, skin, and nail system just doesn’t seem to be doing well at all.

But he seems happy. Tonight, while I was giving him his weekly nail-filing-and-TTouch session, he just lay there, letting me first file his nails and than run my finger tips in clockwise circles all over his body. He seemed confident, very relaxed, and not worried that I would touch his broken nail. Which I didn’t. I just looked at it and took these pictures. And sighed.

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Dog soup

Tonight’s project — dog soup.

Looks great, eh?

I was inspired by our recent trip to Wales, where we stayed with our friend Martyn. He’s a long-time Irish Water Spaniel breeder and handler. He’s also a big believer in natural foods for dogs and people.

He makes what he calls “dog soup.” No, it’s not made out of dogs. It’s made for dogs, out of a variety of vegetables, seeds, and a little fruit. He uses it as a kind of topping over the rest of the dog food, and it’s clear his dogs love the food he gives them.

I watched him make dog soup once while I was there, and it seemed to be a collection of mostly green, mostly non-cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens, various summer and winter squashes, some seeds (ground before blending), a little apple, a little raw garlic, and enough water to blend.

So tonight I was inspired, finally, after all these weeks being home from our visit to Wales. Cooper’s coat is not beautifully thick and glossy, and I’ve been thinking about improving his food to see if that helps. (Tooey’s coat is beautiful, just like the rest of her. I think she could thrive on anything.) But with his compromised immune system, Cooper has a bunch of food restrictions, like no raw meat unless it’s been flash frozen immediately and no grains. Dog soup seemed like something that might help and can’t hurt.

I didn’t have on hand all the lovely vegetables that Martyn uses, but I did have some vegetable cooking water, a little meat broth, a bunch of cooked green beans, some raw spinach, and a little raw garlic. I blended it up, poured it on Cooper and Tooey’s food, put the bowls down for them, and stood back.

They both devoured it. Bowls licked clean.

Hmmm… That wasn’t so hard. Maybe I can keep doing it.

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Homemade dog ear wash recipe

Someone recently asked me for my recipe for homemade dog ear cleaner. Or maybe I just promised it to someone. I can’t remember. Anyway…

Here is my recipe for an ear cleaner that keeps my long-eared IWS ears clean and smelling sweet. I use it after they’ve gone swimming and whenever their ears start to smell a bit off. It’s not to be used to treat medical conditions or infections, though. For that you need to go to your veterinarian.

The recipe is not original with me. I’ve found many variations on the web, particularly on the websites or Internet forums dedicated to spaniels and other long-eared dogs.

In a 16 oz. squirt bottle, mix:

1 cup witch hazel*
1/8 tsp. aloe vera juice concentrate plus 1/4 cup water**
2 Tbs. white vinegar
1 tsp. boric acid powder
Fill the remainder of the bottle with water
Shake vigorously until the boric acid powder dissolves (this will take a few minutes)

If you object to a bit of wet mess or the smell of vinegar in the house, you might want to use this wash outside or in your dog’s bathtub. Shake before each use to make sure the boric acid is dissolved. Hold the ear flap up so the ear canal is tilted up. Fill the ear canal with the ear wash just until it runs out. Gently massage the base of the dog’s ear — you should hear a squish-squish sound. Use a towel to catch any wash that runs out and then let the dog shake his head. Gently wipe off the inside of the ear flap. Repeat with the other ear.

I have seen other recipes that use Gentian Violet or Betadine. I don’t use those ingredients because they stain.

*I’ve seen recipes with rubbing alcohol, but I don’t use it because it can sting if the dog has any abrasions in their ears.
** You can replace this with 1/4 cup aloe vera juice

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Change in the SLO regimen

Cooper has been prescribed so many medicines and supplements to treat his SLO: tetracycline, niacinimide, fish oil, vitamin E, biotin. Plus, on the advice of some other owners of dogs with SLO, I also give him super vitamin B complex and biotin.

Now, the supplements won’t hurt him. In fact, lots of dog owners give their dogs fish oil for their omega-3 fatty acids, which are excellent for a dog’s coat. Though at 6 capsules per day, Cooper gets quite a bit of fish oil.

But the tetracycline — he’s been getting a 500 mg capsule of tetracycline, 3 times per day, for almost 3 years. That’s a lot. A lot.

And it hasn’t been trouble-free. It’s really inconvenient to space out 3 doses of tetracycline so that it’s given as close to every 8 hours as possible. Sometimes it makes him nauseated. And because calcium interferes with the body’s ability to absorb tetracycline, Cooper can’t get food with calcium in it within 2 hours either side of taking the tetracycline. At his dosing schedule, that means almost no dairy — no cheese, which he likes, and no yogurt, which he also likes and which would also help restore the healthy bacteria in his gut that the tetracycline kills.

I’ve been hoping for an alternative, but one that would not lead to a worsening of his SLO. Some inconvenience, a little nausea, and no dairy is nothing compared to the pain of SLO.

Fortunately, yesterday my vet has suggested that we switch to doxycycline. It’s a “semisynthetic” version of tetracycline with some definite advantages. It doesn’t bind with calcium like tetracycline, so the vet has given his OK to give Cooper yogurt. And best, of all, its half-life is 18-22 hours compared to tetracycline’s 6-11 hours, which means that he only needs to take it two times per day, instead of tetracycline’s 3 times per day. And if all goes well, we might be able to reduce it down to 1 time per day sometime in the future.

So we started the new regimen today:

• doxyclycline, 100 mg, 2x/day
• niacinimide, 500 mg, 3x/day
• fish oil capsules, 2-1000 mg, 3x/day
• vitamin E, 400 IU, 2x/day
• biotin, 2500 mcg, 1x/day
• vitamin B, super complex, 2x/day
• Perma-Clear, 1 capsule, 3x/day

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3rd autumn pheasant hunt, day 2

Subtitle: The hawk, the porcupine, and the beavers.

Yesterday morning, our 2nd day of this trip, we walked through a field of grasses and thorny rose bushes, lines with small, cattailed ditches and culverts. Cooper did a much better job out in this more open and somewhat flatter field. He ranged ahead of Russ and quartered the field, looking for birds.

Cooper

Cooper quartering the field, Tooey following along

Rio did the same job for Rod, working out front, searching for birds.

Alas, no birds.

So after lunch, we headed over to the much prettier and more dramatic Upper Goose Lakes. The terrain is much like what we saw Friday at Lower Goose — basalt cliffs, strings of small ponds, Russian olive trees, and sage brush — totally non-urban scenery. But the action was quite a bit more dramatic.

The first incident was with the ducks and the goshawk.

As were walking down the hill toward the first series of lakes, we saw ducks sitting in the water. So Rod, Renae, Russ and I quietly made our way down to the base of the canyon. Renae and I held the dogs while the Rod and Russ crept toward the lake, hoping to surprise the ducks. And surprise them they did. In a flurry of flapping wings, the ducks flew away from the two gunners, who got off several shots.

All of a sudden, a goshawk swept in from nowhere and grabbed one of the ducks. In the hawk’s talons, the duck struggled in mid-air. After a few minutes, the hawk dropped the duck into another pond. We thought about sending the dogs after the duck, but by then, the duck had managed to hide itself in the cattails at the water’s far edge. That would have made a 200+ yard blind retrieve in cold water and then tangled cattails. We decided not to pursue it, and walked on.

And then there was the porcupine.

I wrote in my last post about Tooey’s love for the water. Whenever she disappeared, we could pretty much count on finding her in the nearest pond, stream, or culvert. So, when Tooey disappeared for the fifth time today, we knew where she was — in the pond next to the path where we were walking.

Suddenly, we heard a low, long growl. Renae looked up and said, “Get her out of there now!”

I called “Here!”, and thankfully, Tooey came — her face decorated with porcupine quills. I held her muzzle, and Russ wrapped his legs around her body and pulled quills out of her nose and lips, and even a couple out of her tongue. She flinched as each one was pulled out, but let us do it. (I was so concentrated on getting those quills out that I didn’t snap a photo.)

And as soon as we let her go, she charged right back into the cattails, determined to GET that porcupine. As they said in the movie, she’s got grit.

I called her out. She didn’t come. I whistled her out, and for a moment, I thought I’d have to go in after her. But out she came, got her chicken jerky reward, and then looked back at the cattails, asking permission to go back in. “No. Leave it. Let’s go,” I said. She came with me, but whenever we came to a new patch of cattails, she turned her head toward them, telling me that that’s where she wanted to head.

And lastly, the beavers.

We saw lots of evidence of beavers. Renae found a beaver skull, and then Russ found the matching mandible close by. That came home with us, to be used in some future art project. We also saw lots of beaver dams. And had the benefit of being able to cross a couple of the ponds by walking on the top of a couple of the dams. They looked sort of iffy, seeing as how they were made out of cattails, but turned out to be amazingly sturdy.

crossing a beaver dam

After several hours, we could see that the sun would be going down soon, so we headed back, sans birds. Toward the very end, Cooper started to limp. He’d gotten sore feet the day before, with the skin between the pads looking a bit inflamed. But we’d put some antibiotic protective cream on them and in the morning they’d looked fine.

We’d put some more cream on his feet in the morning and again before our afternoon at Upper Goose. And all day, he showed no sign of discomfort at all, until that last climb back up the canyon sides to the parking lot. That’s when we saw how red and angry the skin between his feet had become.

He spent the rest of the day resting, and rested again during the whole 6-hour drive home today. This evening, he’s limping a bit like an old man, poor dog. I’ll clean his feet with cool water, put some herbal lotion on them, give him some Rescue Remedy, and keep him quiet. If it doesn’t get better, we’ll be off to the vet. And in any case, I’ll have to see what I can do to prevent this from happening on our next hunting trip.

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SLO check-in

Although it’s been awhile since I last wrote about Cooper’s SLO (symmetrical lupoid onychodystrophy), it’s never far from my mind.

Three times a day, Cooper gets medicines. Every day, I’m always on the look-out for another broken nail, another session of determined toe-licking, or non-accident related limping. And awhile back, when Cooper’s coat began to look dry, my first thought was not to wonder about the effects of weather or the need for a new diet.

Instead, it was, “Oh, I wonder if this is a signal for another flare-up of SLO.”

Cooper’s current SLO status

Since last March, when his two front “index” nails were so badly broken, there have not been any new breaks that were anywhere near that bad. He’s had a couple of nails sort of peel, like a banana, where an outside layer of hard nail tissue peels away.

Several nails look very beat-up and irregular. One of these, Cooper started to lick last night. This might mean it has split back under the cuticle and is causing discomfort. If that’s the case, I should see the nail split in the next several weeks.

But it’s not all horrible. Four nails (one on each foot) look beautiful, black, glossy, straight, and strong. And (thankfully, knock on wood, please God) nothing that makes him limp, cry, or bleed.

Medication regimen

We’ve changed his medicines a little bit. We’re still with

• 500 mg tetracycline, 3x day
• 500 mg niacinimide, 3x per day
• 400 IU vitamin E, 2x per day
• 2 1000 mg salmon oil, 3x per day
• 2 capsules Permaclear in the morning, 1 at midday, and 1 at night

To that, we’ve added

• super vitamin B caplet, ground up and added to his food, 2x per day

We’ve stopped (mostly because it got expensive)

• Si Wu Tang powder, 2x per day

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Tooey’s a chick!

Good news! Tooey’s a chick. (Well, we knew that.) To be less cute about it, Tooey has a CHIC number.

That means that she’s taken all her pre-breeding health tests, and that that fact has been published by the Canine Health Information Center (CHIC). These tests are specified by the Irish Water Spaniel Club of America to help breeders make sure that the dogs and bitches they use for breeding are healthy.

Having a CHIC number does not mean that the dog is healthy enough to be bred. Take Cooper, for example, who also has a CHIC number. He’s had all the tests. But he also has a number of disqualifying health issues, like a cataract and mild elbow displaysia, not to mention SLO. So he won’t be bred. (Poor boy. He’d really like to be.)

Tooey, on the other hand, is beautifully healthy:

http://offa.org/display.html?appnum=1477416#animal Accessed 7/12/2011

Next step: Deciding who the lucky dog will be.

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Tooey’s tests

Good breeders make sure their dogs are healthy before breeding. With Irish Water Spaniels, breeders typically get the dog tested for healthy thyroid levels, hips, elbows, and eyes, usually done after the dog is 2 years old.

I am not a breeder, but Colleen, Tooey’s co-owner is. Tooey is 2-1/2 years old, and it’s 4 months after she last went into heat — perfect timing for hip x-rays. (Apparently, a bitch in season has relaxed hip joints to get her ready for the birth of puppies, making an x-ray at that time of less value for evaluating the soundness of the hip joints.) And she hasn’t had any vaccines since last year, making it a good time to test her thyroid levels.

So last weekend I loaded Tooey up and took her to the vet for her thyroid tests and hip and elbows x-rays. We decided to take her to the Steamboat Animal Hospital in Olympia, Washington — the same place we took Cooper for his x-rays.

Since I posted Cooper’s hip x-rays earlier on the blog, I thought I’d post one of Tooey’s elbow x-rays in this post.

canine elbow x-ray

The event ultimately went well, but parts were scary. First they took the blood to test her thyroid levels with. That went fine.

Then it was time for x-rays. To keep the dog perfectly still when the x-rays are taken, many vets (but not all, I discovered later) give a bit of mild anesthesia. That’s to prevent the dog from moving when the images are taken. Movement would blur the image, and the person reading the x-rays wouldn’t be able to tell if there is anything wrong with the joint or not. And the amount of anesthesia is determined by the dog’s weight. In Tooey’s case, unknown to everyone, she needs less anesthesia than most dogs of her weight.

But no one knew that, so I became very worried when they walked Tooey out to me. She could walk, albeit drunkenly, but when she stopped walking, her back legs collapsed underneath her. I told them to take her back immediately and find out what was wrong. No way was I going to take her the 2 hours home to Portland before I knew she was OK.

And about an hour later (a very l-o-n-g hour later), she was fine, just a little sleepy. She stayed that way for the whole day, but the next morning, she was rip-roaring around the house, chasing Cooper and jumping over the couch.

Three days later, I received the results of the thyroid tests — perfectly normal. She’s already had and passed her eye exam. And then today, I received a copy of the x-rays. Now we’re just waiting for the radiologists at the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals to read and rate her hips and elbows. Let’s hope for Excellent or Good ratings. With that, and with her general health being good, she’ll be ready for breeding and puppies.

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Cooper passes (and survives) his 2nd retriever Senior hunt test

The good news first: Today Cooper took his 2nd Senior hunt test, and he passed. 2 passes down, 2 passes to go.

Cooper's 2nd qualifying test: AKC Senior Hunter (Retriever)

Cooper passes the land and water tests

The land series was first. It included a walk up, a double with a 100-yard live flyer and a 50-yard mark, and then a 50-yard blind retrieve. By good fortune, we had trained earlier in the week for most of this scenario — dark brown birds flying through the air against a dark background of trees. Cooper generally does marking very well, so that added practice watching the fall against a dark background could only enhance a probably good performance.

And the blind retrieve was almost exactly the same as what we practiced: charging straight through tall cover to retrieve a duck he hadn’t seen fall. In fact, when it looked like Cooper was going to zoom in a straight line toward the blind retrieve, Russ decided to stop him and give him directions, just to show the judges that Cooper can take direction. What happened at the walk up at the beginning of the land series will show why.

That walk up was hard to watch. After all these years of training, at hunt tests, Cooper still does not have a controlled walk at heel — instead he dances out to the line, several feet out in front of Russ. And on a walk up, that can be a real problem. On a walk up, the handler and dog walk toward the line, and when the team gets there, the judge signals for the bird to be thrown. Only at the point when the bird is in the air, only then can the handler tell the dog to sit. The farther out in front of the handler the dog is, the greater the temptation it is for the dog to bolt out for the bird, and not wait to be sent. But fortunately, Cooper sat when told, and only went out when given the command.

Whew!

Then it was on to the water series: a double with a 80-yard mark and a 50-yard mark with a diversion shot, a 60-yard blind retrieve, and an honor.

I don’t know why Cooper does this, but he always seems to do at least one very dramatic thing at every test. It started with him jumping over the holding blind at the water series and then dancing to the line ahead of Russ. And it continued during his retrieve of the 80-yard mark.

The mark was thrown so that the a straight line to the duck would be very close to parallel to the shore. The dog would be sorely tempted to cheat by running along the bank instead of going into the water, swimming to the duck, and swimming back.

Cooper succumbed to temptation. Unfortunately for him, there was a log right at the edge of the pond. To stay along the edge of the bank, he actually had to crawl along and over the log, then jump into the water at the end of the log, swim to the duck, then swim back to the closest part of the shore. To avoid crawling back over the log again while holding the duck, he decided to run overland around the log and back to the start line. At this point, I was biting my nails. I could barely watch.

But then the rest of the water series went well — he did his 50-yard mark with the diversion shot just fine, nailed the blind retrieve, and managed to restrain himself from jumping into the water while he was honoring the next dog’s work.

Cooper survives the water test

And this gets me to the “survive” part. Like a lot of sports, hunt tests are dangerous. When you’ve been to several tests and no one gets hurt, it’s easy to forget that the outdoor fields and ponds are filled with danger. A not uncommon danger is logs in the water. Submerged or partially submerged log surfaces are smooth and slippery, and often partially broken off branches project out from such logs. Sometimes those branches are also partially submerged and can’t be seen, other times they are visible, but no one expects that the dogs will get near them.

beavers' work puts logs with protruding branches into the ponds

But obviously, Cooper got near them as he crawled along the log at the edge of the pond. He was OK because he wasn’t running full tilt when he got to the log. But another dog, a black Lab, wasn’t so lucky. The Lab ran at full speed and collided his upper chest right into one of those protruding branches. He screamed, turned around, and limped back to his handler, who scooped the dog up in his arms and walked quickly to his car and to the vet. Close-by onlookers reported no blood but the quick swelling up of a white hematoma.

Of course, bystanders discussed whose fault this was. Some said that the judges should have made sure well before the test that no logs or branches were anywhere near a dog’s possibly path to the duck — they would have said: Remove the logs or launch the duck so the dog’s path to its landing place doesn’t intersect with the logs. Others said that a handler should have been aware of the possibility of the log’s danger, and sent his dog in a line that would not intersect with the log, even if that line would take the dog away from the direct line to the duck.

After that dog was injured, a crew of hunt test workers and volunteer dog handlers worked together to drag the logs out of the pond. Too late for the injured dog, and too late to prevent Cooper from doing his log-crawling act.

But for Cooper, there was one small benefit. The injured dog obviously didn’t get his duck, so it was still floating out there in the water. Since we were still there watching, and since Cooper had already run, he was asked to be the “pick up” dog. After carefully checking that there were no more dangers in the pond, Russ sent Cooper out on one extra retrieve for the day.

And that’s all Cooper ever wants — one more retrieve.

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4 weeks of no broken nails

Since going back to the full regimen of medications for Cooper’s SLO, we’ve had no broken nails. That was on October 28 — more than a month ago.

Funny. I just realized that I wrote, “we’ve had no broken nails.” Not exactly true, but that’s exactly how it feels.

I know that Cooper is the one whose nails break, but whenever it happens, it feels like it happens to me, too. I don’t have the physical pain in my feet, but it hurts my heart. I just hate to see him suffer. And I hate knowing that we’ll be dealing with this his whole life.

But, given that SLO is with us to stay, all the alternatives are worse. So, I’ll just try to be grateful that I have my boy, that we have a vet and a treatment regimen that is working, and that right now we have time to enjoy together.

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abandoning our SLO experiment

Well, today we discovered a badly split nail. Looking back at our records, since starting our reduced-tetracycline-&-niacinimide experiment on Sept 15, I can see that Cooper has had 2 minor-ish splits and today’s 1 bad split. Prior to that, on the full dose of tetracyline-&-niacinimide, plus the herbs, we had 11 weeks of no split nails.

The badly split one is the same one that exploded so dramatically back on June 21st (see the middle picture of that post), but then seemed to grow out nice and solid. Then today, it split down the middle, all the way through, all the way back to the cuticle. Plus, one of the halves itself split into half.

I’m not willing to do this anymore. So, we’re going back to the full dose (500 mg ea. 3x/day) of tetracycline-&-niacinimide, plus the salmon oil, biotin, Permaclear, and Chinese herbs. That combo has seemed to give us the happiest results in the past. Let’s hope it does again in the future.

I’d post a picture, but Cooper won’t let me touch or hold the affected foot at the moment. Otherwise he doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort — he’s running around, chasing Tooey, and generally being his usual self.

I, however, am so sad.

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11 weeks of no broken nails, part 2

The vet was just as pleased as we were with the improvement in Cooper’s nails, so after consulting with the veterinary dermatologist, she agreed with our wish to reduce the amount of tetracylcine that we’re giving Cooper.

So now we have the same array of medicines, but just less of the tetracyline and the niacinimide:

• 1/2 tsp Biotin Concentrate 2X, 1x per day
• 500 mg tetracycline, 1x per day
• 500 mg niacinimide, 1x per day
• 3-1000 mg salmon oil capsules, 2x per day
• 2-Permaclear capsules, 2x day
• 3/4 tsp Si Wu Tang powder, 2x per day
• 400 IU Vitamin E, 2x day

It’s sort of an experiement to see if the Permaclear and the Si Wu Tang are really the agents that have led to Cooper’s improvement. We’ve seen significant improvement after he started them about 5 months ago, in contrast to almost no forward progress with having been on the tetracylcine and niacinimide since the beginning of treatment in February of 2009.

That’s a long time, over a year and a half, of being on tetracylcine and niacinimide. We’re hoping that reducing these medicines will not put back Cooper’s status with his nails, while maybe helping bring back his undercoat.

But I don’t like experimenting on my dog. I wish I had a medical crystal ball that could give me the answers I need.

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SLO nails don’t break, they explode

When I say that Cooper’s nails “break” because of his SLO (Symmetrical Lupoid Onychodystrophy), that’s really misleading. It might make you think, “Oh, a broken nail. No big deal. Happens to dogs all the time.”

A much better way to describe it is “blow out” or “explode.” That’s what the nails really do. Picture a nice, smooth, solid popcorn seed exploding.

If the popcorn image doesn’t do it for you, maybe these photos will help:

Back right foot, outside nail

In the picture above, you can see how the top of the nail has lifted up and lifted away from the quick. The quick — the core part of the nail, just under where a green piece of grass is sitting — is already dead. You can see where the top of the nail has also split away from the side of the nail that’s on the other side of the quick. The section of nail on this side of the quick is already gone.

Front right foot, inside nail

In the picture above, you can see how the whole nail had lifted up and away from the quick and then blew apart. It’s separated into three parts: top and two sides. The quick in this one is dead already, too. You can see from this, too, that they nail had already been clipped pretty short before it blew apart. For dogs with SLO, it’s better to keep nails short, but that’s no guarantee that they won’t break.

Front right foot, outside nails

The nails in the picture above are what would be the pinkie (top left) and ring finger (bottom right) of the front right paw. The pinkie has already split into three parts, while the ring finger hasn’t blown out yet. On the ring finger, you can see the initial split along the bottom of the nail, and you can also see at the tip of the nail how the nail shell has begun to separate from the quick. This nail is going to blow apart soon.

Nails that have exploded like this are painful. They need to be trimmed or maybe even removed to prevent them from splitting further up and tearing the cuticle. If you’re very lucky, your dog will let you trim them, but I haven’t been this lucky. Sometimes, with less severe splits, Cooper has been able to chew off the hanging pieces himself, but the nails in these pictures required professional help.

If your dog consistently gets nails like this, get to a veterinary dermatologist as soon as you can. They will recognize SLO and can help you choose treatments that might control the disease. And consider joining the SLOdogs yahoo group for information and support. Or add a comment to this blog entry. If I can help you, I will.

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