I'm afraid I may have discovered why Benjamin was abandoned. In the time he's been with me I just couldn't figure out how someone could just let a seemingly healthy, well cared for dog that they'd spend the money to have the teeth removed on, kept well groomed, and seemed very well loved. It's a very scary realization for me having just lost a very very special dog to epilepsy and heart disease in March. I took him with me on a trip to my mom's. Half an hour away I stopped for gas, Benjamin was his normally happy self, took him for a quick pee break and put him back in his car seat for the short last leg of our trip. I was focusing on my driving and not really watching him, he was secured in his car seat as usual. When I got to my mom's he was totally unresponsive, completely limp! I had a panic attack, rushed to the ER, and of course by the time we got there he'd come around and was acting like his normal self again. Temp was normal, blood work normal, urinalysis normal, vet couldn't find anything wrong and declared him completely healthy, and told me that this was probably the after math of a grand mal seizure that I hadn't seen since I was focused on my driving. It's a very realistic theory since he's debarked, and so tiny I may not have heard a thing
He's so tiny that being debarked it has to be darn near silent or you can't hear him, and with the noise of the traffic around me, it probably masked anything. I didn't see or smell any pee on his blanket - but since I'd just walked him the vet said that's not unusual with a dog this tiny, and as I well know from Portia and her horrible seizures, they don't always use bladder/bowel control either.
He seemed fine very quickly afterwards and was happy and perky while we where waiting for the ER vet to see us. He was also happy to eat as soon as they tried to offer him a little something after they drew his blood (just in case it was hypoglycemia they wanted to get some food into him while we waited for the blood to be ran). The ER vet sent a report to my regular vet, and we've talked and came to the decision that the best thing for me to do is watch him and call her if anything like this happens again. I'm going to schedule him for an EKG and an echo with the cardiologist I like just to be 100% sure there's nothing with his heart - we don't think there is, but never hurts to be positiveI'm just heartsick. I went through a horrible ordeal keeping trying to control Portia's epilepsy before it finally took her from me at only 9 year old. I just pray this was a one time freak thing, and it doesn't happen again, I can't handle epilepsy robbing me of another baby!!!! But I bet this is why Benjamin's former owner never went looking for him when he ended up at the shelter......
I hope I'm wrong, but wrong or right, I'll deal with it however I have to, but it's not going to be easy if I have to go through the heartache of Epilepsy again with another very special dog!!! I already deal with it with my princess, Aiyana! Maybe the stress of the trip triggered whatever happened, I don't know - but until we have more answers, I won't be taking any more trips!