Gentle soul. Deep thinker. Worry wart. I’d rather socialize than exercise. Not the first out of bed, but always there when I’m needed. When others talk about me, I hear those things a lot. Otto is fast out of the gate, but my slow and steady approach gets there too. When I was a puppy, I plummeted headlong into an ocean that I heard everyone saying was just a puddle, and from that I developed a deep fear of the water. But I stuck with my methodical approach for getting over it, and now you can’t keep me out of the water, as my laps in the pool attest.
I get along with everyone, provided they’re not out to cause trouble. At the first hint of a problem for me or my friends, my soft side goes out the window. Even the big dogs know that I’m the boss. I think this is important, so I’ve tried to make the youngster Ernie comfortable when he meets a giant dog. Mind you, being the boss doesn’t mean you have to carry a big stick. When I thought Otto and Ernie were getting a little out of control, all it took is one word from me to tell them to knock it off.
My Basics
- Full Name: Prestwick’s Mettle of Rearden (Hank)
- Born: 5/15/04
- Passed: 8/22/18
- Parents:
- Sire: Allright Smokejumper
- Dam: Ch. Botany Bay Cinnamon
My Health
Whew. I’ve had my issues. Forgive me if I forget a few.
In November of 2004, at the ripe old age of 6 months, I got my first bout of Lyme disease. Shame on me for not noticing a nasty tick from my romps in the woods. For a few hours, I was really out of it and even walked head first into a few walls. Fortunately, a quick trip to the vet to get the antibiotic doxycycline straightened everything out.
Before I was even 1 year old, I contracted lung worms, which turned out to be from coyote feces. That’s odd, since I have never seen a coyote, and I’ve looked hard. On 2/1/05, I had a trans-tracheal wash and bronchoscopy. I was home in no time and back to my old self. The fix was relatively easy, but getting this diagnosed was frustrating because it was so unusual.
By this point I had enough trips to the vet to last a lifetime, but I was just getting started! In February of 2006, I got Lyme disease again. I wasn’t walking into walls this time, but I had to get some more of that doxycycline to feel better. Like my first experience, the pills did the trick, and in just a few days I was back to normal. Because of my history, I’ve had regular C6 blood tests to make sure the Lyme disease is still under control, and so far, so good. I learned a good lesson: if you don’t want to get Lyme disease and walk into walls, get rid of those ticks ASAP. I know that’s hard to do, especially when ticks are good at hiding in my fur.
Fortunately, for about the next 5 1/2 years, I managed to avoid other health problems. I kept up with my regular checkups, and everything looked good.
But I was about to hit a few bumps in the road. Maybe I should call them stones. In the fall of 2011, I had some discomfort in my abdomen, and it turned out I had bladder stones. On 9/16/11, I had my first cystotomy to remove them. They turned out to be non-struvite (calcium oxalate) stones, which forced my vet to give me a special diet. After this surgery, I gave the Hill’s u/d diet a try. In about a year and half, more stones came back, so I on 4/10/13, I was under the knife again to have them removed. By this time, I had also put on some extra weight, so I figured it was time to check my nutrition with the Clinical Nutrition Service at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. I decided to give the Royal Canin Weight Control Small Dog diet a try because that would help me maintain my urinary health and shed a few pounds.
The folks at Tufts mentioned that once you get these stones, the odds of getting them again are extremely high, even if you watch what you eat. Watching what you eat means sticking to foods that are low in oxalates, but that might just buy you more time before the stones come back. So I stick to my diet and keep my paws crossed.
By the end of 2013, the word “surgery” was once again in my vocabulary. I was having a lot of discomfort in my shoulders, and my concentration was suffering as a result. A blood test revealed that I should have an even more specific blood test to check my PTH and PTHrP levels. It took a while for the results of this test to come back. The test suggested I had a parathyroid tumor and an ultrasound confirmed that. So for the second time in 2013, I was under the surgeon’s knife, this time for a parathyroidectomy.
Since my surgeon didn’t think my discomfort was due to the tumor, I figured I’d make a visit to the neurologist. Talk about having your head examined! On 1/14/14, I had an MRI to see if my discomfort was tied to my spine. The diagnosis? I had syringohydromyelia, which in very simple terms means I have too much fluid in my spinal cord in the neck area. This isn’t common in Norfolk Terriers. The word on the street is that it more frequently affects Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. To keep the fluid under control, I take omeprazole, or Prilosec, every day.
I’ve sort of skipped over the problems of 2012. In late June-early July 2012, we were struck with a pretty bad storm, something the weather experts called a derecho. The thunder and rain and trees falling down made me think that the world was about to end. We lost electrical power for a week. Even the traffic lights on major roads were dark. Good thing I didn’t think about starting this blog then, because we had no power and no internet! It was extremely frustrating because I was the only one that seemed to recognize the severity of this crisis.
Fortunately for all of us, the doom seemed to pass. Since that summer, every time I’d hear thunder or heavy rain, I’d be reminded that doomsday was approaching, and I’d try to drag everyone into the car so we could at least try to escape. On the suggestion of a friend, I started wearing a ThunderShirt so I’d be better prepared when things started to go south in a hurry.
By the spring of 2014, it looked like we might be safe for a while, but I still wasn’t 100% sure, so in March of 2014 I decided to check with a behavioralist and go over some of these issues. After all, was it my anxiety or was everyone around me completely clueless? I turned to the experts to answer this question. Ernie likes to refer to this as my visit to “the shrink,” but once he has met as many doctors as Otto and I have, he’ll realize they don’t like that term. The doctor prescribed a very small dose of fluoxetine (2.5 mg per day by a schedule). After a while, the serotonin enhancing benefits of that drug faded, and it started making me more sedate and lethargic, so I stopped taking it. The very next day, lethargy wasn’t holding back my ability to lead. The doctor gave me a prescription for another drug, citalopram, which might not make me sleepy. My doomsday memories were fading with the passage of time, so I decided not to take it. Both drugs are in my medicine cabinet if things fall apart unexpectedly. Thank goodness that hasn’t happened.
Some of My Favorite Pics
Here are a few of my favorite pics, arranged from most recent to oldest. Damn, I was a good looking puppy!
