Urinary Accidents

Last weekend, my cousin Jen and her family came for a visit.  We decided to take her kids to a nearby school track for some exercise.  Her eleven year old son, Sam, is on a cross country team and had brought his running shoes.  Selah, who is seven, insisted that she did not want to run and wore her stylish, fuzzy boots to the track.  She wanted to walk Pongo while Sam and I ran.  Selah has grown up around dogs and is a budding dog trainer.  When I was single and living in Seattle, I used to leave Pongo with Jen whenever I went out of town.  Selah has been around Pongo since she was an infant.  She loves to work Pongo, having him "sit" or "lie down" for treats. 

We piled into my Saturn, Selah in charge of Pongo's leash, and drove to the middle school.  As we walked from the parking lot, Pongo stopped to mark on a bush, then we continued along the sidewalk.  Jen pointed out that Pongo left drops of urine on the cement.  I stopped to look.  I had never noticed that before.  Jen explained how her dog, Keone, had exhibited that same trait when she developed Cushing's Disease at the end of her life.  Urinary accidents are one of the telltale symptoms of Cushing's, one that becomes frequent as the disease progresses.  Jen explained that when it first started, Keone would go to the bathroom, and then have trouble turning off the flow, leaving droplets of urine as she walked away. 

Suddenly, I felt shocked and numb.  A couple weeks before, we had thunderstorms in the morning.  It was a weekday and I had to go to work.  Terrified of thunder, Pongo was shaking and on my heels as I got ready to leave. Later, Ashley told us that he had behaved the same way with her when she got ready for school, and had tried to follow her out the door.  During the day sometime, he had an accident in the basement, leaving urine all over.  It was the second time since June that he had had an accident during a thunderstorm.  Now here was another sign that he was starting to lose urinary control.

I thought of the conversation I had with Dr. Lamb on September 5th.  We have been monitoring Pongo's liver enzymes and went in for a blood draw the first week of September.  Dr. Lamb called me back to talk about the results.  His liver enzymes remained very high, but had gone down a little bit since the previous test in June.  She explained that the elevated liver enzyme could be:

• an inflammatory response to something in his body, for example the arthritis in his knees, or it could be a problems with one of his organs

or:

• it could be an endocrine disease such as Cushing's

Dr. Lamb explained that they generally don't treat Cushing's until the symptoms are really bad, so she did not recommend testing Pongo at this point.  Other symptoms for Cushing's include drinking lots of water and heavy panting.  Pongo has already started exhibiting these symptoms as well, but they are minor.  My gut feeling tells me he is probably developing Cushing's, and that his elevated liver enzymes are not due to a problem in one of his organs.  We could spend a lot of money doing testing and x-rays, but Pongo is terrified of the vet.  He is otherwise healthy and happy, and so Del and I have decided that putting him through that trauma is not worth it. Nor will we do any more surgeries.  Pongo's lump is coming back on his penis, nearby where the lump was removed sixteen months ago.  Dr. Lamb says it could be the nerve sheath tumor coming back, or it could be benign.  We have decided not to find out.  Pongo is nearing his thirteenth birthday.   We are now focusing on quality of life and enjoying every moment we have with him.  We hope it will be a couple more years.

I took off running around the track.  Pongo pulled against the leash in Selah's hands.  He is a momma's boy and wanted to be with his Momma.  Selah ran across the infield with him, catching me on the opposite side of the track.  They ran alongside me in the grass.  And so it went, Selah and Pongo sprinting back and forth across the infield to catch me, running with me for a ways, then resting.  He looked like a three year old again, pulling with boundless energy.

      Selah rests with Pongo after running more than a mile.

As I write, Pongo is laying down behind my chair, sighing.  He has his head on the floor between his paws in the way that he does when he is trying to remind me in his quiet way that he needs a walk.  In the eleven+ years that we have been together, I have learned to read his subtle, nonverbal cues.   Sorry, Pongo, I get the message.  I will draw myself away from my computer and put on some shoes.  It is time for us to go outside.  Our time.