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Story of the Month - May 2008    

"Norman"   

This is a story of a rescue dog named Norman.  It was a Saturday morning in April of 2007 when I did a pet search for a Dachshund somewhere in Ontario.  Turns out one shelter had a 5 year old doxie that had been found in a farmers field eating dirt and rocks. The lady who found him, was named Nora so we decided to name him Norman.  He had been in a shelter for almost 5 days and nobody had come to get him.  Late on Saturday we received the call that we could adopt him. We were so in joy knowing we could bring in this dog and nurture him back to health.  After all he had been through the past six months things have been working well with his rehabilitation.  Suddenly on a Sunday morning in September he started making horrible squeeking sounds. We weren't too sure what was happening.  He was having a difficult time carrying his back legs around and acting very different . We got him to the emergency vet in London Ontario. The vet inspected his back and informed us that he may have a ruptured disc  and had to have x-rays.  Sure enough there was an area that was of concern to him.  He suggested at that time to use a steroidal medicine to help ease the pain and help with the problem. The medicine we gave him for a few days did nothing but cause more sleepless nights and tearful moments.  We then took him into our regular vet for a series of tests.  The vet took him off the steroid realizing that he had a reaction to the steroidal treatment and wanted to try a non steroidal type for Norman.  At this point the pain was too great for him and the doc administered Torbutrol ,a really strong pain killer to ease the pain.

The next day was worse and our vet made him an appointment with a specialist.  We rushed him to Guelph Animal Hospital to have his back surgically worked on.  At this point he still had deep sensation prior to the operation which is a good sign .  During the 4 day stay, the hospital called several times to keep us informed .  It was a roller coaster during those days . When the doctors cut into his back and preformed surgery they noticed his blood level had dropped severely, and didn't know why. They proceeded to run a camera into his abdomen and found pools of blood caused by a bleeding ulcer.  They needed to perform a blood transfusion (yikes).  After that phone call we didn't know what to think and just had to wait things out. The bleeding ulcer was caused by the mixing of steroidal and non steroidal medicines earlier the week before.  I wish the vets had warned us about something like this happening .

March of 2008 and Norman is doing well. This is our first dog and didn't realize how fast a dog could become part of our family, and no matter what the cost, it is our responsibility as loving owners to give him his life once again .


                                                                                                                                                        Sincerely
                                                                                                                                                       Steve and Erin
                                                                                                                                                       London ,Ontario, Canada

Update on Norman ... He is home now from having  another successful surgery over Easter weekend completed on T11/12.  We had heard fenestrating the other discs was a good idea so they fenestrated the discs down to T3 to hopefully  prevent this from happening again .    As of this writing Norman has healed well.  

Have a story you'd like to submit? Send an email to lindox5@yahoo.com.