Chandler

Chandler...our little man is bouncing back from an extremely scary episode. Chan has always been a routine dog. He likes the family to be together, he doesn't like the house out of place, and he doesn't like his schedule messed with. If his routine gets disturbed he'll start to act out a little. Typically he gets depressed, won't eat, and usually gets an upset stomach. Needless to say we didn't really think to much about him being distant when he started acting up while I was house sitting for my mom.

We had decided the best thing would be for Jared to stay at our house with Shy and Chan and I would go down to my mom's and stay with her dog Tokyo while she was out of town for 10 days. The first couple of days seemed to be fine then Jared started noticing Chan becoming distant. He shrugged it off a bit because he figured since I was gone and he had the house destroyed (preparing for a nursery)that Chan was just being Chan.

Jared called me on a Friday and said Chan wasn't eating and had thrown up and pooped in the bed. I thought that was odd but agreed that it was probably because he was depressed about me being gone and the house being a mess. Saturday rolled around and Jared came to get me so we could go look at nursery themes. We talked about Chan and Jared suggested I come to the house to spend some time with him to see if that would help. So after lunch we headed up to our house to check on Chan. Jared went downstairs to go get the dogs out of their kennels and I waited upstairs in the kitchen. Chan could hardly walk up the stairs. He continually fell up the stairs and when he saw me he tried to walk over and just laid down. I told Jared that wasn't normal but since he hadn't been eating we thought maybe he was weak. I tried to hand feed Chan some food but he was not interested. Jared did give him some cookies and he ate those. We then tried some white bread and he seemed happy to eat come of that. We were thinking it had to do with us all not being together. So we decided to hang out for a while and just relax.

We ended up leaving and Jared took me back to my mom's house and he headed home. Throughout the afternoon and early evening he said Chan didn't look good, had thrown up more and refused to eat anything. At that point I suggested that they come down to my mom's house and we see if that helps. So Jared packed up the dogs and came down.

When Chan got to my mom's house he ran around, jumped up on her couch and just seemed to be perfectly happy. We're thinking this is all he needed. Chan hung out with me on the couch while we watched some TV before bed. I took Chan to bed with me and he wouldn't relax. So I went and got Shy and he seemed to calm down. Throughout the night he threw up 4 different times. I knew this wasn't normal and that we'd have to get him into the vet on Monday. At about 6 in the morning I heard Chan whimper and then I smelled something. He was laying on the bed completely out of it and had pooped on himself and didn't care.....NOT normal for him! I quickly got up, tried to clean him up and took him outside. When I picked him up he was just a rag doll. He wouldn't lift his head or anything. I walked him outside and tried to put him on the patio. He collapsed, he couldn't stand. So picked him up again and tried him in the grass....he tried to walk but just fell over and rolled down my mom's lawn. I FREAKED OUT!!!! I went and picked up him, told Jared to get up and take him to the ER right away! I put Chan in the bathtub in case he had to potty again. He never moved.

I got on the phone to the closest animal ER and explained what was going on and that Jared would be right up with Chan. We wrapped Chan in some blankets and off Jared went. I stayed back and took care of the other dogs and then headed in to the ER to meet up with Jared. It took forever!! When I got there Jared still didn't know what was happening, they had told him 30 minutes, and that they were taking blood work and trying to find out what was happening. We were told he was blind, we were told they thought he might be in toxic shock from eating a mushroom in our backyard, so we had no idea where things were going to lead.

After a few minutes one of the gals came and brought Chan into the room we were waiting in. I took Chan and he just laid in my arms like a baby. He didn't move, didn't whimper, didn't bark....nothing. 3o minutes passed and no one was coming to talk to us. An hour passed and still no one came.....almost an hour and a half later Chan got restless and started to whimper. Next thing I know he was peeing on me. I told Jared to get someone now and Chan went limp. I put him on the table and one of the doctors came, felt for a pulse and decided to take him back and put him on fluids. I thought we were losing him at that point. We waiting for a few minutes and the doctor came in and said she had to give him a steroid shot and he sat up like nothing was wrong.

A second doctor came in and we were told that Chan was in Addisonian Crisis. They explained that his body was shutting down because his adrenal glands had stopped working and his body wasn't getting the needed steroids he needed to function. Hence the reason when they gave him the steroid shot he sat up. The doctor continued to go into details about how once he was out of the crisis stage he'd be considered an Addison dog. What that would mean is daily medication and a monthly steroid shot for the rest of his life, but not to be discouraged because Addison dogs live full lives.

We had to leave Chan at the ER all Sunday and Sunday night for him to be on IV's, heart monitors, oxygen, heat bed and hourly blood draws. Then on Monday we'd have to transfer him up to our vet for them to do more tests, monitoring, and make the final decision if he'd be able to come home on Monday night.

Chan continued to improve throughout the day on Sunday and the blood work continued to get better and better. Monday morning we went and picked up him up and transferred him to our vet. He stayed all day Monday in their care for more IV's and blood work and to take the official Addisons test. We went up to the vet Monday evening to talk with the doctor and she felt like he could come home if we felt OK with watching him. We brought him home with all his meds and new food and waiting until his blood work came back to see if he was really Addisons.

Two days later we got 100% confirmation that he has Addisons disease. He is doing much better on his medication and is gaining some weight and acting more and more like himself. We do have to keep on eye on his stress level as that is a key contributor to them crashing.

He is happy to be home with all of us and enjoys picking on Shy whenever he can. It was extremely scary going through this but we are so thankful that we still have him and that he is on the mend. We'll be taking him to the vet this week for his 10 day check up and then in November we'll go back in to start our monthly steroid injections.