Jesse

We were getting ready to go for a walk, and he was all excited and playful. We ran around the house a bit and he was having a great time scurrying like a much younger bull terrier and then all of a sudden when we got to the family room, he put his front paws out full stretch like he was slamming on the brakes, his head went up in a grimace, and he went perfectly and unnaturally stiff, and then he literally tipped right over on his left side, legs outright and stiff, as if a slight breeze had knocked him right over. His eyes went up and he was out cold.

We were right there when it happened. We knelt down to see if he was still alive. He was still breathing, and his heart was beating furiously. In a few minutes he started breathing more normally, and he acknowledged our concern by managing to work up the strength to give us one thump of his tail. A few minutes later he managed to make another thump with his tail. Ten minutes, and he was up, a quick wiggly shake as dogs are wont to do, and he climbed up into his couch.

We took him to the vet where he spent the whole day.

Tonight, he's home, frisky and enthusiastic as ever.

However, he is a very sick dog, we've now learned, and probably doesn't have many more months to live. The vet showed me four X-rays of Jesse and basically, his heart is twice its normal size, and he has pulmonary edemas, and his liver is 1.5x normal size due to poor blood flow into the heart. Basically, the pump's broken, and it has been growing to try to compensate for leaky valves.

The vet said yes, basically, Jesse had a heart attack today.

Vet: "Basically, if Jesse were human, he'd be a candidate for a heart transplant."

Also: "Face it, Jesse's a 1995 model, and male bull terriers live about ten years..."

If Jesse were healthy, his heart rate would be 120 beats/min; the EKGs showed abnormalities and rates between 160 and 180+.

But, he's home now and seems ok for now. It's remarkable if you think about it, twelve hours ago he was out cold on the family room floor, and as we knelt beside him, we feared for the worst.

Now he's settled for the evening on his couch, as if it was just another typical day. He's one tough dog.

The vet also said that his heart problems explain pretty much everything: the dog's inability to go for even short walks anymore, plus his frequent discomfort when lying down on his couch in the evening. His pump just can't handle any exertion anymore.

I hope Jesse lives to his 10th birthday (April 19).

He has to go on a salt-free diet, a bunch of new prescriptions for his heart, and back to the vet's this Wednesday for an ultrasound, and then for an appointment with a heart-specialist vet who has had a lot of luck with some sort of experimental Canadian heart drug (not even on the market yet in the US) which apparently is able to reduce the size of the heart and relieve some of the problems.

Fingers crossed...

Posted by brian at December 11, 2004 08:05 PM