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Originally Posted by River Have any of you heard of this or experienced it? My Golden Retriever, Montana, had an episode on Thurs. We were out of town for the 4th of July and I left her behind because she is 14yrs old and doesn't do well with change or the car! My friend who was watching her called me and said that she thought Montana had had a stroke and couldn't stand up, her eyes were bouncing around and she had lost control of her bladder and bowels. We were coming home on Thurs anyway so I told her to make her comfortable. I called my vet and she said it sounded like canine vestibular disease and is common in older dogs. It is an inner ear thing, the vestibular cochlea nerve in the inner ear gets inflammed and the dog gets dizzy and can't stand up. She also has a head tilt to the left. Good news is that as bad as she seemed, we just need to be supportive and give her time and it will pass (1 to 2 weeks for a full recovery!). She wanted me to give her the weekend to see if she improved and lo and behold, she has! I read alot on the internet about it, the only thing that concerned me was the loss of the bladder control. She had so many accidents in the house on Thurs after we got home that I got some baby diapers to put on her. She also had really loose stools and was panting and drinking alot. The articles I read didn't say anything about loosing bladder control so i was afraid that it had triggered something else and i would have to put her down anyway. But, good news is that she can now get up on her own, she staggers a little but can walk on her own and she kept the diaper dry all day yesterday and today. I am so happy and feel so lucky that she seems to be on the mend. My Yorkie, Shepherd and Jack Russel seem to know there is a problem and have been staying close to her which I thought was kind of interesting. Has anyone else ever experienced this syndrome? |
Oh my this does not sound good. I had a golden who was 13 ears old and she had what appeared to be a stroke or seizure. She then would start tilting her head like you described and she also lost control of her bladder and got dizzy and had bad balance and she did drink alot and pant alot. Well things were fine for awhile and she did improve after a few weeks and we thought she was better but then everything went down hill. She started have seizures every day and had to be put on medicine for it. She never really recovered, we had to put her to sleep after several months of this, which was the hardest thing to do, we grew up together and she was my closest companion and friend.
I am not trying to scare you, but everything you described happened to my Duchess and happened execatly like what has happened to your Montana. When I read this, it brought back the memories and it is so eerie because if I did not know better I would swear you were talking about my golden, Duchess.
I pray that this does not happen to your Montana, it is one of the hardest things to go through. I will be praying that she will get better and stay that way...