Stanley The Wonder Dog  Stanley was a Jack Russell Terrier (JRT). He weighed approximately 14 pounds, had a broken white coat with black & fawn markings, and a black mask. Stanley came into my life in May of 1992, at the age of…
This page is dedicated to my love of animals, mainly dogs, and specifically Jack Russell Terriers. I’ve been blessed with two and a half amazing Jack Russell Terriers, Stanley and my rescue dog, Belle. The “half” amazing Jack Russell Terrier is Dolly, who is half…
We got up screaming this morning — we woke at 9:30am and needed to be at the theater by 10:00am to ‘strike’ the set of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. (Strike means to reset the space, removing our sets, props, costumes, and the rest to make…
Buster the Dog came to live with us on Sunday, May 21, 2006. He is a 6-year old Daschund who suffered an unknown spinal trauma on Thursday, May 18, 2006 and became paralyzed from the neck down. His owners weren’t able to take care of him,…
Here’s a quick update on Buster, the dog that’s currently with us… As you may recall from this article, Buster is a 6-year old sweet Daschund who is currently paralyzed from the neck down.
On their first attempt last week, the folks at Wendy’s hospital weren’t able to get a read-able X-ray of Buster’s spine. However, Wendy got a good film yesterday and found that Buster has an overriding spinal compression of C6-C7. Below is a scan of a human spine (we’re looking into posting Buster’s scans) with a similar problem, from this page:
Wendy isn’t able to do the type of spinal surgery that might help Buster, plus the location of his compression is in “no-man’s land” of the spinal cord — not easy to get to from the usual surgical entry spots. We’ve got him on a pretty good dose of steroids, muscle relaxers, and some Metronidozol (for his bowels, which seem to be upset by all this). He’s comfortable in his little bed and we take him outside to potty several times a day. His teeth, bad breath, and little pot belly are evidence that Buster enjoyed a diet of people food in his previous life, something that will change as he recovers. We provide him I/D, which is a bland food that should be easier for him to digest. He’s currently pretending not to be interested in dog food, but eagerly accepts the pieces of cheese we use to get him to take his meds.
Dr. Purvis, one of Wendy’s colleagues, is going to attempt spinal manipulation (chiropractic) on Buster today. This procedure isn’t without risks — first, he’s knocked out; secondly, because of the location of his injury, there is the possibility that messing with his spinal cord could cause his respiration to stop (Wendy and the other doctor assure me that this possibility is very remote) — but with the exception of the ‘stopping breathing’ piece, the proceedure shouldn’t make anything worse. Once I know anything about how that goes, I’ll post it here.
UPDATE: As I was finishing this article, I called Wendy at the hospital. Buster’s procedure was already done and she said that the doctor stretched Buster’s neck out so far that he “looked like a little giraffe” and that they got some movement from his spine, and that Buster was only knocked out for a few minutes. As he was recovering, one of Wendy’s nurses saw Buster eating some food (he had to scootch his way over to it, too), but when Buster saw her looking at him, the little stinker stopped eating! This dog knows all the tricks. At this point, it’s too soon to expect any visible changes in his behavior, but we hope that this spinal manipulation will speed his healing.
We’re still hopeful that Buster can be brought back to a fairly normal lifestyle. He’s already able to roll himself over from his side onto his belly and does a bit of ‘paddling’ with his front paws when excited.
After running a few errands, Wendy & I hung out with Buster and the other pets this evening while we watched AMERICAN IDOL and voted, voted, voted for Taylor Hicks! While we were out, I picked up some Stouffer’s French Bread Pizzas and prepared one…
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