Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking (Thank God!)

Max is 6 (this picture is a little old)

This past Friday we had a big scare with our dog Max.

He fell down the stairs, literally, the entire staircase.  I didn't see it happen, but heard it.  My initial thought was it was Grace because I didn't hear her yelling at me anymore, but amazingly she was sitting quietly next to Maddie's crib.  I couldn't imagine what had fallen so I ran over, looked down and there is Max just lying there.

So I ran downstairs and poor Max was a mess.  He was vomiting, urinating, and pooping everywhere.  (I actually feel bad now because he walks by Maddie and she says "poop".  She is going to give him a complex.)  My thoughts were, either he has broken bones, internal bleeding, or he is dying.

We called Joe to come home and cleaned Max up.  I checked him for broken bones, because he kept trying to get up, and he didn't whimper, so I guessed he was OK, but didn't know if he was just in a lot of pain.  The girls and I just tried to keep him awake and still until Joe got home.

Joe got home and we loaded up Max and Joe took Max to the emergency vet around the corner from our home.  Unfortunately, there was miscommunication and I thought Joe was going to our vet, so Maddie, Gracie, and I drove around for about two hours, but Joe said it was better that way instead of trying to have the girls in the waiting room.  Luckily Joe went to the emergency vet, because Max was in major shock.  Falling down the stairs is traumatic, but if you know Max and his high anxiety falling down the stairs from him is 10x more traumatic than any other dog.

Initially the vet had two guesses for diagnosis, one, that he had ruptured his spleen or two, he has large masses and Cancer somewhere.  After a quick ultrasound and blood work the vet couldn't figure out what it was, there were no masses and his blood pressure and white blood cell count were super low.  Also, his blood was not clotting and his lymph nodes were swollen around his intestines.  The good news was he was sitting up, like a normal dog, without any broken bones.

So the vet loaded him up with fluids, antibiotics, and gave him some blood plasma transfers and he was responding very well to that.  In fact, that afternoon we went to see him and he was looking much better and apparently had been walking a bit.  The vet then was thinking maybe it was his gallbladder.  However, the ultrasound that afternoon showed everything normal.  The next morning he walked right into the exam room we were in to see him, wagging his tail, and was back to about 70% normal.

Turns out they don't know exactly what caused all this, most likely just a bad infection.   We wish we knew if he got into something, although that is not like Max, or if he just caught something.   They think what happened is that the infection lowered his blood pressure causing him to faint at the top of the stairs and fall.  He came home Sunday and is doing great!  Almost back to 100%.  He is not very happy about not being able to play ball for a while, but is doing a good job resting.