Shasta's Road to Recovery

8/21/13 - I spent the day making arrangements with my work and family to drive Shasta down to LA to see Dr. Plechner in person. I live in Sacramento and the Sinai Center Veterinary Hospital that Dr. P. works at is in Culver City. Once my calendar was free, we jumped in the car the next day and made the trip down. 8/22/13 - Shasta and I jumped in the car, drove down to L.A. where the besties met us to go see Dr. P. We got her injection and her oral meds to go and we were outta there at the fraction of a cost of all the other appts we'd been to in the last 2 weeks. I let Shasta enjoy the L.A. atmosphere a bit as she stuck her head out the car window as we drove down Sunset Blvd. We walked by the Viper Room and Shasta got her picture taken...ok I did too! ; ) Upon meeting Dr. P. the first thing he said when he looked at Shasta, was that he noticed her legs were bowed. He asked if anyone had ever mentioned this to me before and they hadn't. He explained that this is a sign of maladsorbtion in dogs. Hmmm... I've had digestive problems with Shasta since she was a puppy. Wonderful. He still was hopeful we would see quick results in Shasta with his treatment. He took his time explaining everything to us and didn't mind that I had my cronies in the office with us to ask questions I wasn't thinking of. When we walked out of his office there were people in the waiting room who drove quite a ways to see him as well who were just marveling over him and how he's helped their dog so much over the years. : ) After all of this, I needed a beer...so my besties took us to the Rush Street Bistro where we could bring Shasta onto the patio with us. Once we left I took Shasta back to her suite at the La Montrose, compliments of her auntie. After a nice rest we headed back to Sacto. 8/22/13 thru 9/2/13 - Shasta's first night after her injection she did pant a bit more, seemed to go crazy for food, and wanted to drink a lot of water. Dr. P. told me this might happen, but shouldn't last and it didn't. Throughout the week I was transitioning her diet to weed out anything she could be allergic to, adding the supplements to her meal plans, paying attention to her eyes, behavior and stool. (fun). I've documented everything daily, but won't bore you with the details unless you want them. In summary, Shasta did fine during her first week considering she's still blind with vision better sometimes than other times, (still trying to determine why at this point) and transitioning her food. I'll provide an overview of what I learned for Shasta's diet in another post for those interested in learning how the nutrition plays a huge part in this disease. She is still learning to map out the house, doesn't do well when people move things or set things in her way, but otherwise she does well. My biggest worry is her getting excited and hitting her eyes on a sharp corner. I'd love to replace my furniture, but that's not in the budget at this time so I'll let you know what we've come up with.