It’s funny how dogs become part of the family, isn’t it?
Sunny is our 2.5 year old mutt. She looks like a pure-bred golden retriever, but she’s not even close. We got a second pup from the same litter, Shiloh, and she looks like a Rottweiler. But they’re both just good old-fashioned mutts.
Anyway, three weeks ago, Sunny turned up limping. No visible injury or wounds. Nothing stuck in her feet. No complaints if you checked or squeezed or prodded her. Just limping around, holding her back leg off the ground. We weren’t too concerned. It’s happened before, and usually after 7-10 days, she’s tearing off after bunnies again.
This time, though, not so much. She injured the opposite front paw a few days later and had to hop on two paws for about a week. But even after the front paw healed, she still held the back leg up. Every few days, we mentioned it. And finally, we decided it was worth checking into.
On top of this leg thing, Sunny’s got a scrawny problem. She eats just fine, but her ribs are always visible. Of course, she also hunts and forages and eats Lord-knows-what. So I figured she probably had worms. The last time we were at the vet, I asked about worm medicine. I was told the best (cheapest) option was actually heartworm preventative, which also deals with other kinds of worms. But we hadn’t kept up with heartworm medicine, and before you can start an adult dog on it, they have to do a blood test to make sure the dog doesn’t already have it. All right then.
So today I called and got an appointment for Sunny.
First, of course, I had to find the dog. I called my in-laws to see if the dogs were at their house. Shiloh had been around, but not Sunny. So I walked up the hill to the back side of the farm and started calling. Pretty soon, Shiloh came tearing out of the woods. A few more calls, and Sunny left her hunting track and came, too. We got home, snapped a leash on Sunny, and dumped her into the back of the van. She was less than thrilled.
At the vet’s, we went straight to an exam room, where I hauled my 50-lb. dog onto the table where she cowered and trembled while they raised her up. The assistant went over our concerns while she took the dog’s temperature. She thought there might be a knee injury. The vet came in, did a full exam of Sunny’s leg, and said nothing was clearly injured that she could feel. We could do x-rays or a round of anti-inflammatory drugs. I opted for the drugs. Then they did the blood draw to test for heart worms.
We went out and sat in the waiting room. Tim played my iPad and Sunny sat as close as possible so I would keep petting her.
Finally, the vet came out with bad news. Turns out the blood test was positive. And heart worms is not a good thing. Left to itself, the dog just wastes away and dies. But the treatment is harsh. They start with a blood test to test kidney and liver function to see if the dog is even healthy enough to try the treatment. And sometimes, the treatment itself will kill the dog. Yikes.
I sent them with Sunny to do another blood draw to start the second blood test and tried to call Eric. No answer. Sunny was brought back out, and we waited a bit longer. Finally, the vet came back. This time with better news.
Turns out the heart worms test also tests for other things. And it was positive, but not for heart worms, as they thought when they looked two minutes early. When the test was fully completed, the positive was for lyme disease.
Sunny has lyme disease.
Apparently, dogs get heart worms from mosquitos. But lyme disease comes from ticks. And like in humans, it often shows up as achy joints and general discomfort. Like an “injured” back leg with no obvious signs of injury. And even better, it’s treated with antibiotics.
So it’s likely that Sunny has some regular type of worms, and we can start her on preventative any time (which I did when we got home). And she gets to take antibiotics and the anti-inflammatory which will hopefully help the leg issue and the lyme disease.
I probably should have been more irritated with the vet for reading the test results early and giving us a wrong diagnosis. But, truth be told, I wasn’t at all upset. If I hadn’t had her checked for heart worms, they might not have thought to look for lyme disease at all. It was a mistake, yes, but one that got us exactly where we needed to go. And compared to “your dog is dying of heart worms,” lyme disease doesn’t seem like such a big deal after all.
Now I just have to remember to give her the medicine every day for a month. We’ll see how that goes…
