I Want My Dog to Live Longer

 Week Six: I Want My Dog to Live Longer (The Greatest Wish)

I wish I was the king of rock and roll

I wish I was cool and in the know

and I wish I’d wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind”

I’d like to see my late mother again

I’d like to stop poverty, save this world from hunger

But the greatest wish, oh, I wish to come true

I want my dog to live longer

--Curtis Salgado & Alan Hager, 

I Want My Dog to Live Longer (The Greatest Wish), from Rough Cut

On Christmas Day 2021 while we were in Jacobus, PA to celebrate the holiday with our son’s family, I received a phone call from someone at Pet Suites in Greensboro, NC where our dog Leon was boarded. She asked me if Leon had a history of seizures. I told her that he did not. 

He does now.

Canine epilepsy affects less than one percent of dogs. It affects 100% of ours. Much is known about canine epilepsy. Much can be done preemptively, but there is no cure. I call it his “demon”. Apparently there are two types of seizures in dogs: generalized and focal. Leon’s seizures are generalized, which includes salivation, urination, passing out, convulsions, and manic body tremors. It is no picnic.

The day we met Leon, his name was Ronald. At just seven weeks old, he and three of his brothers provided Deb and me an exhausting twenty minutes as we tried mostly unsuccessfully to herd them into staying anywhere near each other so we could choose one. We each carried two squirming brown balls of electricity to the front yard where they lived. As soon as their paws hit the grass they scampered wildly in a mad scramble over, under, and through each other. They chased each other. They tackled each other. They seemed to have planned their escape in advance. As I chased one after the other bringing each escapee back to the center of the lawn, I noticed that Ronald found his happy place on Deb’s lap. Unlike the other three, Ronald seemed content while she scratched his belly. The others struggled to break free when they were placed on their backs.

As if to make sure he had found his new family, Ronald chased after me and seemed to ask me to pick him up, which I did. Our decision was made; by him. “Leon” had picked us.

The first seizure I witnessed occurred one month after the Christmas episode. The next seizure was two weeks later. And the one after that came a week later. With medication, the next one wouldn’t happen for an entire year. But eight months afterward he had three seizures within three hours. Without warning and with no identifiable triggers, his demon returned in the form of what is known as cluster seizures.

Mark Twain once said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” I worry that his next seizure will be his last. Let’s hope Ole Sam was right. Leon’s veterinarian told me the red line is a seizure that lasts five minutes; Leon’s seizures last about twenty seconds. Truly incredible how long twenty seconds can seem. 

A friend who knows Leon's medical history well once told me that Leon chose us because he knew we would take care of him. It’s a stretch for me to believe that Ronald somehow knew that the two exhausted strangers running wildly from the neighbor’s yard to the street to the front porch trying to gather his crazy brothers were the people who would provide for him for the rest of his life as he struggles with epilepsy. No, I don’t believe that for one second. 

What I do believe though isn’t nearly as hard to swallow. If I could have that crazy morning over again, but this time knowing that this beautiful brown bundle of electric epileptic energy would live with the constant threat by an unpredictable demon, I could have saved a lot of time and energy chasing the others.

I want my dog to live longer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGqhgkqfIeU