Tex

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Original: Tex has had a rough time. His family contacted us looking for help. Despite the fact that we offered to place him through our program, they took him to a kill shelter. Luckily, the shelter called the vet who knew one of our volunteers. After a scary few days, we pulled him and placed him in a foster home that had just opened up.

Here is what his surrendering family told us about him:
Tex is a year and half old liver/white neutered male (70 pounds!) who has permanent neurological damage which shows itself in seizures. He was one of nine in the litter and Sharon says at two days he was taken to the vet and vet felt he was very “sick”. Tex improved, was a lively puppy, found his way into their hearts and was fine until approximately 1 year later when seizures started.

He is now on 4 phenobarb and 1000 mg bromite (sp?) a day which is controlling the seizures. This medication was just changed a month ago and seems to be working. Prior to medication change, he had a number of “cluster” seizures. He was hospitalized for one that was very severe. The parents worked and felt guilty leaving the dog crated during the day for fear a seizure will occur when someone is not there. They also comments that he gets his medication at dinner time which puts him in a funny state (“arthritic like”), so when he feels best the family is not there to play with him.

Tex is housebroken, leash trained, loves the children and seems to fit in well except for the unpredictable seizures. They said that 95% of the time he is a “normal” dog.

This from his foster mom:
Tex seems to be house trained, although he does get up during the night. I can’t tell if this is just the unfamiliar surroundings or the fact that he was in the shelter for a while. Otherwise he has a great personality. He likes to play, although because of the medication, he is not quite as active as a normal dog his age. He did have a seizure last night, but it wasn’t a bad one and it could be from all the excitement he has seen lately. I think he would make a great companion dog for someone who is home a lot. That’s all for now. I will have his pheno level checked sometime this week.

UPDATE:
Tex’s blood work came out great. He is exactly in the therapeutic range with his phenobarb. We have lowered the dose down to 1 1/2 60mg tablets twice a day which is almost half of what he was getting before. He hasn’t had any seizures so, so far so good. He seems very happy now, he plays like a puppy all the time.

UPDATE:
More from Tex’s foster mom:
Just a quick update on Tex. I have be house/animal sitting for my mom. She has 3 goats, two dogs (a 5 month old chocolate lab and a 4 yr old bischon mix) , and 4 cats. I brought Tex over there and he has been having a ball. The lab and him play together all day. This is the most active and the happiest I have seen him since I’ve had him. I guess this shows he is well with other dogs and I think he probable would like that. His medication is down to 1 phenobarb twice a day and 1 kbr every other day. Still no signs of a change for the worse so that’s good news.