Wednesday 31 May 2017

Tali's Got Vestibular Syndrome

"Vestibular disease in geriatric dogs is often mistaken for stroke. The vertigo caused by the disease can be particularly intense in older dogs with symptoms of nausea, difficulty or complete inability to stand up, head tilt, nystagmus, and circling,"
This morning at about 5am Sammi started to scream, Steve got up and let her out. 10 mins later she was screaming again, I got up, checked her over and let her out. She was fine, everyone else were watching me but seemed settled. Again I went back to bed, she then started to scream again, I was not impressed, I got up screamed at her to shut the f*** up and went back to bed again! Sammi never gets us up at night. After finding Tali poorly this morning I wonder now what Sammi knew? What she heard? What did she sense?
Though I know of several dogs who have suffered from Vestibular disease I have nothing to compare Tali with as I've never seen a dog with the condition before until they are recovering. At 8am she couldn't stand up, let alone walk, with 2 leads for assistance she can now walk. She had a wee but no poo. Bless her she still seems totally disorientated and one eye is flickering continuously, but there is definitely  an improvement on first thing this morning. As we were up and about before the vets were open today Tali had her breakfast, to see her eat did give me some encouragement.
At the vets she had a steroid injection into the vein this morning, steroid pills to start tomorrow and vivitonin today. Vivitonin is a well known "Old Dog" tablet and is used successfully  for numerous old dog elements. Providing this is just "one of those things" and not caused by an underlying problem, the vet is hopeful that we should see improvement within 48 hrs and then the prognosis for Tali is pretty good.
And breath!!!!!