My Statistically Improbable Pets

I have a little bullseye on my head, up on top where God can see it. It’s so God knows I am here and can send me pets with the rarest disorders so I can care for them. Maybe God knows I will treat them and care for them, and not put them to sleep or ignore their ailments. That has to be the reason. I think statistically I have got to be a the far end of the range, not only for the dogs I have had with rare disorders, but also for the fact that I have had more than one of them.

The first was Autumn. If you are interested, you can read her entire story beginning here. Or you can read an elegy of Autumn, as well as some of my other canine friends (living and dead) here. Autumn had something wrong with her adrenal gland. We didn’t really figure that out completely until years after her death when studies began to link the issues she had with that gland. I suspected it during her life, but we were never able to confirm Cushings, the most likely suspect. She lived with interstitial cystitis, an ailment so rare it wasn’t diagnosed until after I read an article about a human suffering the same condition in a woman’s magazine, mainly because no one even knew what it was. Then she got Diabetes Mellitus (sugar diabetes) and everything that goes along with that. It was just one thing after another.

I also had Poppy, a Jack Russell terrier who was allergic to just about everything, but particularly grass seed. I live in the Willamette Valley, the grass seed growing capital of the world, so life was rough for Poppy. She would develop fungal infections and scratch herself silly. I was constantly having to change the round of allergy shots to account for new allergens. It was frustrating and expensive.

Now I have Oliver. I love my little Oliver. It’s a good thing he’s such a funny, dear little angel, otherwise it would be difficult to tolerate the fact that he drinks about a gallon of water a day and subsequently pees as much. He leaves little puddles on top of the grass. He will pee for a full two minutes, which is a LONG time for someone to pee.

Did I mention Oliver weighs 8 pounds? Imagine it:  This tiny sprite of a dog drinks so much water that he can stand and pee for 2 minutes solid. I have no idea where in his body the water fits. His waist isn’t distended, but he’s got to have the stretchiest damn bladder on the planet.

Oliver came to live with us in late May. His previous owner lived on social security and could not find a place he could afford to live that would take pets. He mentioned that Oliver drank a lot. After several visits to the vet, I contacted this man and asked if he knew what was wrong with Oliver. I told him it didn’t matter what it was, I would never get rid of him, but trying to make the determination was killing me financially. He said nothing was wrong, Oliver just drank a lot. I hate to break it to you Guy, but dogs of 8 pounds do not drink a gallon a day and Oliver drinks a gallon a day. I know. I measured.

In any case, we started with all the usual tests, expecting Diabetes Mellitus (sugar diabetes) or some bladder ailment. Those tests went nowhere. Then Addision’s. Nowhere. Then Cushings. I KNEW he did not have Cushings. Autumn was cushinoid. Oliver was not cushinoid. For one thing, he’s the pickiest eater in the world. He eats like a teenage girl afraid of getting fat. He turns up his nose at raw turkey. He turns it up at cooked turkey. He turns it up at about 10 brands of the most expensive canned dog food in the world. I have finally gotten him to eat the Steve’s Real Food I feed Ava. It took two months to get him there. What he really wants is food I won’t let my children eat:  potato chips, french fries, junk. Anything junk food, Oliver is all over it. Good, healthy food? No, thanks. He also has beautiful, thick fur. Cushinoid dogs have thin, dry fur that looks awful. They also have sway backs. If anything, Oliver’s back is humped.

The point is that I was spending a fortune and finding nothing wrong with this little guy. We even did a test to see if it was psychosomatic, meaning he was drinking compulsively because of a behavior issue, but that failed as well. You can’t fake urine concentration, and Oliver’s urine would not concentrate.

Then one of the vets described Diabetes Insipidus (water diabetes) and it fit. I knew this was what Oliver had. The specialist I was seeing wanted me to spend a bunch more money that I didn’t have to rule out every other cause, but none of those other causes fit, not even close. And I could not afford it. There is a simple test that can be done for Diabetes Insipidus, but they wouldn’t do it without running through these other damn tests, so I called in the big guns. Ah, not really. I called a friend who is a vet, but doesn’t live near me. He has a vet friend who works near me. He said she would do the test and she did.

In a normal dog, the body has a complex system for balancing the volume and composition of body fluids. The kidneys remove extra body fluids from the bloodstream. These fluids are stored in the bladder as urine. If the fluid regulation system is working properly, the kidneys make less urine to conserve fluid when water intake is decreased or water is lost, for example, through sweating or diarrhea. The kidneys also make less urine at night when the body’s metabolic processes are slower.

To keep the volume and composition of body fluids balanced, the rate of fluid intake is governed by thirst, and the rate of excretion is governed by the production of antidiuretic hormone (ADH), also called vasopressin. This hormone is made in the hypothalamus, a small gland located in the brain. ADH is stored in the nearby pituitary gland and released into the bloodstream when necessary. When ADH reaches the kidneys, it directs them to concentrate the urine by reabsorbing some of the filtered water to the bloodstream and therefore making less urine. With Diabetes Insipidus, either the hormone isn’t produced (rare) or the kidneys don’t have the receptors to receive the signal from the hormone (really rare). There is a test that can be done where the dog is given reduced amounts of water over time at the same time it is given the hormone. If they have the type where the hormone isn’t produced, there will be improvement and the kidneys will concentrate the urine.

In Oliver, he had improvement, but his urine didn’t concentrate. This baffled me. I’m not a vet, but I understand biologically what is going on. How could he drink and pee less, but his urine still not concentrate? Apparently, there is a combination version that is even rarer than the other two, and it appears from all observation that this is the version Oliver has.  Why, oh why? Oh right. It’s that damn bullseye on my head. So now Oliver has to take medicine, but he also has to keep wearing diapers and we have to be more sure than the average doggy that he has lots of fresh water around him all the time. He can’t go all day like other dogs. He has to have a special waterer in his kennel during the day when we’re gone. He gets up at night to drink and pees in his diaper. Good times.

Ava has an issue too. Hers isn’t rare though, but I had not heard of it. It’s actually quite common in girly dogs. Considering all of the dogs I have ever had except for two have been females, I’m lucky I haven’t gotten it. I get dogs with problems I’m statistically not supposed to encounter and don’t get the problems I statistically should have encountered. Go figure.

Ava’s is kind of funny. It isn’t funny for her, but it is still a funny disorder. Her little vulva gets sore because her chubby legs rub together and cause it to become ouchy. She then licks it which makes it more sore and inflamed. Because it is sore and inflamed., the chubby legs cause more discomfort, which leads to more licking, and on and on. Poor little thing. Her chubby butt causes vulvar inflammation. Who woulda thought?


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s