Long Term Resident - Guinness

Guinness came to RMGDRI after being surrendered by a family that had no time for him. At 18 months of age, it was immediately apparent that he had spent most of his time alone. His foster family described him as extremely shy and not used to having free roam of the house. He was previously kept in a mud room. Guinness relies heavily on his foster brother, Farley, for confidence and support.

Guinness came in diagnosed with growing pains and on pain meds something his former vet stated he would outgrow. After visiting a Rescue vet, it was suspected that Guinness had Wobblers and further testing would be warranted.

11/4/2010 (Foster Family Report) - Guinness has been diagnosed with Wobblers. He has limited mobility in his back legs and is extremely unbalanced and will fall easily if not assisted. He has gained confidence with going up and down stairs but has issues with walking on hard surfaces. He needs a lot of room to negotiate corners and turning inside, the tendons in both front feet were not working, causing him to stand and walk on his tip toes , but with his daily walks his feet are starting to stretch out, although he still gets swelling and pain in both. Dr. Anderson feels that he is not a candidate for surgical repair of his cervical vertebrae and will most likely experience the degenerative effects of Wobblers. Of course, there is no way of telling how soon or how fast these effects will develop. He requires pain medication twice daily and Dr. Anderson has started a prednizone regimen to see if this will help his back leg movement. He is shy and timid, shows some food aggression towards other dogs, not people, and we are working on this with him. He knows basic commands such as sit, wait, and come. He has to walk with a gentle harness to avoid putting any stress on his neck, and the vet recommends only short walks of no more than 15 mins. He is sweet and kind towards people, gets along with our other dogs and loves attention. When we originally picked him up, he was under weight but is a good eater and should be able to maintain a healthy weight.

The prednizone did not seem to help Guinness with his condition so RMGDRI sent him to a specialist for further diagnosis.

12/2/10 - Andrea took Guinness in today to see the specialist. He agrees, that even though Guinness does not present heavily with typical wobblers symptoms, that without a mylogram to confirm, that is also his best guess. Perhaps a mild form that will be get progressively worse, as we all know. Guinness does not seem to be in any pain and he suggests that once the Pred is out of his system for a few days, we have his bloodwork checked and if all is okay, start him on Rimadyl which is his NSAID of choice. All this we can continue to do at Cottonwood which is our regular rescue vet and closer to Andrea.

01/13/2011 - Has had his initial four sessions of acupuncture and I have talked to both Andrea and the acupuncturist. The consensus is that the acupuncture has definitely made a difference. It is more noticeable in his 'attitude' than any structural changes, which we all know are not really going to happen in wobblers. He still drags his back leg and he still has good days and bad days when he can do certain things but not others. For example, his back end just gave out going up the stairs the other day and he fell back down. The acupuncture seems to have helped his mobility, but not increased the amount of activity he can do,w which is also what I've seen in my own wobblers dog. After a 15-20 minute, he is worn out. However, Andrea has seen a marked improvement in how he appears to feel. He isn't always panting constantly and he is very excited and happy to go on walks and such. Guinness has also bonded pretty heavily to Farley it seems. Guinness is very scared of most things outside of his immediate world, but queues off of Farley quite frequently. This was confirmed by the acupuncturist who said that Andrea brings Farley to Guinness's visits and she has to go over and act like she's doing acupuncture on Farley first before Guinness will let her touch him. Apparently, if Farley does it, it's okay.

After much discussion by the Board, it was determined that Gusiness would be one of our newest members of our Permanent Foster Program and fostered by the Howton family. We are happy to report that Guinness is responding well to his accupuncture treatments.

At RMGDRI, we don’t want to put adoptive families through the heartbreak and expense of taking in a pet that suffers from medical problems as serious as Navarre’s. But we do have great vets who work with us, and generous donors who help out. So when the rescue is financially able, and we have a willing foster family, we do try to accept dogs and place them in a foster home for as long as they’re with us. “It’s always hard to put them down,” says Lori, who has had two permanent fosters before Navarre. “But even if you can give them just six months of knowing what it’s like to have someone care, it’s worth it.”

Lori says Navarre is “the sweetest dog on the planet. He has an ear infection right now and though cleaning it clearly hurts him, he doesn’t move and he’s so gentle.” Navarre won’t be lonely – Lori has two Danes of her own (both adopted from RMGDRI) and a ‘rat dog’ as well as five teenagers.

Our ability to take in dogs like Navarre is partly a money decision, like it or not – if we don’t have funds to support a permanent foster, we can’t take them. Please consider contributing to RMGDRI this year, to help us take care of Navarre and all the dogs like him who need us so badly.