Cassie 2004
October 7th:
It seemed like a typical morning when our boxer Cassie jumped up on the bed for her morning smothering of attention. I had a bottle of water that I had just finished drinking and tossed it toward her since she usually liked to crunch on the plastic. She went to pick it up and gave a "yelp" and ran and hid under the covers. Puzzled by the behavior we just tossed the bottle on to the floor. Her play instinct took over and she jumped to catch it. Upon "getting it" she yelped again, dropped the bottle and ran and hid.
As a good parent I knew something wasn't right and too her to the vet. There she got a through examination with no outcome. Satisfied that even the vet couldn't find anything wrong I took her home.
October13th:
I get a phone call from Mike as I was out of town saying he was taking Cassie to the vet again. This time her left eye swelled up and was almost shut despite rinsing it out with saline. So, back she went with a diagnosis of Conjunctivitis and a cold. Home she came with ointment for her eye and original Bayer aspirin since she also seemed stiff.
October 20th:
Bad news. Cassie won’t eat, drink, or take aspirin. I called the vet just to find he doesn’t work Thursday’s and then was off on vacation for 3 weeks. Not good. So I called the other vet in the area and made an appointment. Mike took her in and came back with a diagnosis of a disease I’ve never heard of before. Masticular Myositis (MM). After doing much research the long story short MM is like MS for dogs. The immune system attacks the muscles in the jaw causing severe pain when opening the mouth.
The doctor prescribed Prednisone at 50mg a day to help with the immune system. And said that if she wasn’t able to open her mouth by Monday to give him a call back.
October 23rd:
Because it hurts when Cassie opens her mouth, and she opens her mouth mostly to play with toys, by her logic toys are bad. Her anxiety level went through the roof and she would almost pee herself with fear just at the site of a toy ball. I called the vet again, with my luck he was away for the weekend but had a sub. I figured, what the heck, 3rd opinion can only be good. She agreed with the first doctor and even got out the medical books to verify.
She was nice enough to prescribe some anxiety medication, Tramadol, and Amocicillin just for the off chance she had tetanus.
It’s been a few days now and the Tramadol is helping immensely with her anxiety and the Prednisone seems to be working finally. I’ve seen teeth lately and she’s even gotten the courage up to bark and roughhouse with her boyfriend Rufus. I’ll keep you updated on the treatment and how she is doing.
December 03, 2004
Cassie is doing much better. She has full range of her jaw, and is down to only 1/4 of prednisone every other day. Her anxiety for toys is slowly starting to wear off. I notice she takes all her toys out of the basket at night and plays with them but will shy away from them if we pick them up to play with her. She does fetch sticks and snowballs so I'm sure anything left is all in her little puppy head.