02 Base for my son

[Snowbound]

It was good having Jack home on RAP this past Christmas.

While he was home we had an episode with Mulder. He went into a seizure for about 2 minutes and it was scary. I thought maybe he ate something or a bug bite caused it until his blood work came back as normal. The vet ran a bunch of tests but couldn’t find anything. A few days later he had 3 seizures in one day and back to the vet we went. More testing and then we found out he has epilepsy. We started him on medication and went about a week without a seizure but then they came back. We changed his meds to a stronger script but has side effects of liver damage. I started researching and found a somewhat local clinic that specializes in CBD for dogs. I gave him his first dose when I got home that night but I wasn’t prepared for what was to happen next.
Long story short, Mulder lunged and attacked my daughter’s friend unprovoked. He got off 2 bites before I was able to intervene. We took her to the hospital and she was ok, shaken but not hurt thankfully. He barely broke the skin, more bruising and swollen than anything else. It was the worst feeling in the world having my dog attack someone’s 10 year old daughter on my watch. Mulders demeanor and behavior changed for the worst shortly after that first seizure. I spent thousands of dollars on obedience training from when he was 6 months to 14 months and it seemed all that went out the window after the epilepsy diagnosis. The wife and I both knew what we needed to do but damnit, I only had him 18 months and 23 days!
The next day I made the appointment and had to say goodbye to my new best friend after only a brief time with him. Damn that is hard!

 

[Snowbound]

Most of you know how I am with my animals. I didn’t take it too well having to put him down.
We had a vet visit that day to reassess the direction we wanted to go with his medication but after the incident the day before, Jess and I both knew what we had to do. So I had left a message for the vet and explained what happened and what direction we wanted to go. I have never brought my dog in to put them down, I’ve always had the Dr come to the house. But I couldn’t wait to make an appointment, I had to do it while I was thinking clearly otherwise I probably wouldn’t have.
When we got to the vet, he agreed that we were making the right decision as hard as it was. But then dropped another bomb on us. Since Mulder was involved in a bite including a Dr visit and patient care (she was given antibiotics), he informed us that there will be an investigation opened and paperwork filed. Because of this, the protocol is to quarantine the dog for 10 days to monitor the behavior. It’s a rabies precaution. Dr said he knows Mulder doesn’t have rabies but since the bite was brought to his attention he has to follow the law. I told him what if I didn’t say anything and just brought him in to be put down? He told me he didn’t know what would happen. But I didn’t want this poor girl to have to get preventative rabies shots either. So since we were putting Mulder down, there would be no 10 day observation period, there was only one thing left to do. Dr has to remove his brain and send it out for testing at the county. This was another $650 charge. I lost it!!! I was going to take Mulder somewhere else that didn’t know about the bite, but if the case was opened I was worried about the rabies shots this poor girl would have to endure.
The Dr said he knows how hard this decision was for us and could see how we were taking it especially after all the vet visits and money spent on Mulder since his seizure, the Dr said he would cover the procedure afterwards. It wasn’t about the money, it was just knowing that not only am I putting my dog down but his brain is being cut from his skull before he is cremated. That was a hard day for us all.
Julianna cried herself to sleep for 4 nights holding Mulders stuffed animal with his collar. I’m gonna miss him too.

 

[adventurenali92]

Awesome that you got to spend Christmas with your fam!

Sad day about the dog…. sucks…. I went through it last summer with tow of the dogs that belonged to my best friends parents that I knew from pretty much puppies over the course of house sitting for them. The older of the two I knew since had about 3ish and it was jsut old age time but still so hard. And the younger German shepherd was just too aggressive and had to be out down as well. So hard to say good buy to our fur covered friends.

 

[Tonyrodz]

So sad. Really sorry about Your buddy Mulder. Never an easy thing to do.