Rocky Mountain Great Dane Rescue, Inc.

Sampson came into rescue on January 10th, extremely emaciated and weighing only 80 lbs. He was a nervous wreck, shaking constantly, and clearly lacking proper coordination. It was evident that there was definitely an underlying medical condition going on from the moment we saw him, despite the fact that his previous owners reported that their vet had found nothing wrong with him.

Our first mission was getting some meat on his bones and Sampson had a wonderful appetite from day one. He settled right into his foster family's routine and warmed up quickly to everyone. He made friends with the other dogs in his foster home as well as at doggie daycare. He loves going to daycare, which has been wonderful for his socialization, but he does have to take a lot of breaks because he gets tired easily and does fall sometimes. We also noticed that Sampson seems to struggle quite a bit with maneuvering stairs and tends to lean on the wall when walking down a hallway which both seemed troublesome. He shakes quite a bit when laying down and we were very suspicious that the root of his problems was something neurological, so we decided to schedule an appointment with a specialist.

January 30, 2008

Sampson took a trip to Alameda East today where he had a Neurological exam performed by Dr. Cuddon. Dr. Engle and his assistant, Angelica, were also there to help with his examination. Poor Sampson was fairly nervous throughout the process, but he was amazingly tolerant of all the poking, prodding, and twisting going on! On a happy note, he weighed in at 100 lbs, which means he has put on 20 lbs since his arrival.

Dr. Cuddon identified the problem being in the neck and said the rest of his spine is fine. He noted that he is definitely worse on his right side as evidenced by the way he walks and the lack of pull back in his front leg. He didn't want to move his neck to the left and his right leg had quite a bit of trouble negotiating on it's own. He said that Sam is at a pretty typical age and showing all the classic signs of Wobbler's disease caused by spinal cord compression. .

Dr. Cuddon also performed a CT Mylogram (which shows the bone better than an MRI would) and the results confirmed his diagnosis of severe Wobbler's Syndrome. The most severe compression is in C5 and C6, the 5th and 6th vertebrae, but there are also slight changes in 4-5 and 6-7. Sampson has significant bony change, dramatic narrowing of the canal, and compression fo the spinal cord.

Dr. Cuddon is right on the fence as far as whether or not Sampson is a good candidate for surgery. Success of surgery is variable and it depends on a variety of considerations such as how long it has been going on and which areas of the spine have been affected. Ideally, you only want to have to go in and fix 1-2 vertebrae and if Dr. Cuddon were to perform this procedure, he would likely have to partially compress 4-5 and 5-6 in addition to major surgery to 5-6. He would like to go ahead and start him on Prednisone which is also a good indicator of the potential for success. We are going to re-evaluate in 2 weeks.

February 14, 2008

Sampson has been on the Prednisone for around 2 weeks now and he is definitely showing improvement! He is getting in and out of the car much better and he is actually walking on tile floors with relative ease. He isn't falling nearly as often as he was initially and he seems to be gaining both strength and coordination. He is also putting on weight and feeling much better overall. Dr. Cuddon is pleased and would like to keep him on the same dose of steroids until there is a plateau in his improvement. At that point, we will cut him back to once a day on the Prednisone and go from there.