Mr. Buddy Rose the American Staffordshire Terrier Part XVI

(Parts I-XV of Mr. Buddy Rose's story are posted below. If you would like to read them in chronological order, please scroll down to Part I. You may need to click "Older Posts" at the bottom of this page. Thanks for reading the remarkable story of Mr. Buddy Rose.)

Monday, September 27, 2010
Thank you to everyone for your thoughts, good, healing energy and prayers for Mr. Rose. Because we really don't know what is happening with him right now, I will try to do a more timely job of keeping his story updated.

Yesterday, Mr. Rose's walking abilities may have improved slightly. On Saturday, if anything, he continued to lose ground. We are hoping his condition is now stabilizing and he will start to improve. He may be a little better. Yesterday, he didn't lie down to urinate, he squatted. This morning, although pretty shaky, he lifted his leg a couple of times. Yesterday, about half-way through his breakfast, he laid down and continued to eat. Today, we elevated his bowl he stood to eat his entire breakfast. One of the side effects of the Prednisone, he's hungry and has no trouble finishing his meals (and any of Mollie's leftovers, too). He is eating well and drinking lots of water and all of his "plumbing" is working. Even though some of these details may not be the "nicest" things to write about, we are once again watching the little details in him very closely so we can know if he is improving or getting worse.

Two things still motivate him: food and cats. Yesterday morning, before I took him out to potty, I put several treats in my pocket. I figured if he laid down in the street, I could use the treats to get him back up. I know he is not one to lay down on his walks. I am also learning that even though he is struggling to walk, he doesn't like the fact that he is not getting to walk his long morning walks to the park. Part of me believes he is lying down during our potty walks because he needs to rest. Another part of me knows he is only lying down when we have made the turn to come back to our house instead of going to the park. (Can you say stubborn?)

Yesterday morning as we walked, I made the turn to come home instead of turning the other way to the park. Dear Mr. Rose laid down, right there, on the sidewalk. I waited a couple of minutes then I took a treat out of my pocket, waved it in front of his nose, moved away from him, held the treat out and told him to come and get it. He immediately got up, came to the treat, ate the treat and laid back down on the sidewalk. We did this little dance for a block and a half and were still a block and a half from home. I knew I didn't have enough treats to get him home. But then, a miracle of miracles happened. Mr. Rose saw a cat down the street near our house. He ran, not full speed and not completely steady, but a good pace, all the way to our front yard. RAN! Then he laid down again, this time in the grass in our yard. When Buddy was crawling, he was pretty talented at crawling fast to chase cats. Even with his struggling walk, he can still run to chase cats.

Even though he ran after a cat yesterday, we are doing the best we can to limit his activity, at least until we see some marked improvement in his walking. I am not talented enough to keep him from running if he wants to chase a cat. And, because there is the possibility of a spinal injury in his neck, I am doing my best not to let him pull. I had little choice but to run with him and try to calm him down as we ran. Since we don't have a back-yard, I have to walk him on a leash so he can potty.

Both the Colonel and I are questioning whether Mr. Rose is in pain. We have come to our own consensus that whatever is going on with him must be painful. The vet said he didn't react like he was in pain but he has said this before when Buddy had a prostrate infection and we KNEW he was in pain. (This happened in an earlier part of Buddy's story. Buddy was bleeding from his penis. Vet said he didn't act like he was in pain. I asked the vet if he were bleeding from there, would he be in pain. The vet then refilled Buddy's pain medication for the prostate infection.) If he is in pain now, he is not showing it. He doesn't want to play much, or walk around much, and he is sleeping a lot. He does not yelp or vocalize any kind of pain. From his crawling, prostate infections or neutering surgery, he never has shown he was in pain.

One of the vet assistant's called early this morning to check on Buddy and see how he was doing. The main question was, "Is he still walking?"

Yes, he is absolutely still walking! The past few days have been very scary for us. He is still walking. I don't really have words to tell you just how happy this makes me.