Well, one of the primary reasons for me trying this whole blog thing is this dog. Apache is my best/worst/most expensive dog by far. He's the large male black with white Belgian Sheepdog in the trio picture... (Sorry, I haven't figured out how to put pictures in the middle of my posts yet..)
Apache is a rescue too, all of mine are. He was returned to the shelter on 3 occasions by the time he was 7 months old, labeled untrainable, too big, & needs a farm. A LOT of work and time and effort later and he now has his AKC CD. He has never let me down, I didn't exactly take him to classes to prepare (bad idea if thinking about competing), with only 1 match (pretend competition), training him primarily on my own, but when I asked him to 'work' for me, he always did/does. He got qualifying scores 3x, under 3 different judges, which is what is required to get a CD on a dog.. He's a big entension of me, often in motion before I can give him a hand signal. As WILD as he was, is as amazing as he is..
He's a rough one though, he has cost me a fortune!! He ate the entire contents of my bathroom garbage once, and ended up with a 3 day stay at an emergency clinic. He has terrible food & inhallent allergies, that cause strange bouts of diahrrea and refusing to eat. And he also has a bizarre disease called Cutaneous Histiocytosis (that's a mouth full!). He was diagnosed a couple of years ago now, after he broke out in lumps everywhere, and they just spread and multiplied. He was truly breaking my heart, and we ran from vet's office to vet's office, until one decided to biopsy the lumps. The biopsy results took WEEKS, and came in around Thanksgiving. That's when we got the diagnosis, and mass confusion. No one had ever seen the disease first hand and a lot of vet's had never even heard of it. In the mean time, the lumps kept spreading all over his body. They were like tiny M&M candies just under the skin, but they were rapidly covering everything. The only 'approved' treatment is very high doses of seriods...ridiculously high doses. I poured over the minor information available on the web, and everything I found said the steriods would likely kill him...this was not an option. The cure shouldn't be worse than the disease. I found one person who switched the diet to all raw foods and some suppliments and her dog improved/went into remission. Around Christmas time, he began to get lumps/lesions on his eyes and actually couldn't see one night! I couldn't take it anymore, and he was confused/scared. I thought about putting him to sleep, but just couldn't. He was only 5 at the time... I was selfish, called family crying and begging for any input possible. My sister (a herb fanatic in her own right) told me to make tea out of Eyebright herb, soak a cotton ball, and put it over his eyes as a warm compress. I didn't think anything would work, but figured it couldn't hurt, so I tried it. The next morning his eyes were starting to clear, it was unbelievable.
After that terrible night, I figured I was running out of options. I was still thinking of putting him to sleep as the lumps kept spreading, and I couldn't get an appointment with a holistic vet for another month.. I opted to run to a local wholesale meat type outlet and buy him rabbit. Did I mention he also has terrible allergies?? He had eaten it before and enjoyed it, and more importantly, had not had any (bad) reaction to it & he would eat it. I started giving it to him cooked, along with yams, and some herbs my sister recommended. After about 2 weeks, the lumps were not only not spreading, but some were being reabsorbed!! It was amazing.
This is the primary reason I am trying to blog.. So that someone searching for Cutaneous Histiocytosis, might stumble upon this blog and find some hope. I'll try to keep it light, and post about the silliness that I deal with every day with these guys, but I'm also trying to journal somewhere Apache's cures/treatments and all...
Trio at the park
My 'Fur Kids', I wouldn't trade them for the world - today anyway
2 comments:
Hello -
My 1 year old bernese mountain dog has just recently had a terrible bout with facial swelling, and I'm very worried that it might be cutaneous histiocytosis. I'm hoping that you will read my story and perhaps be able to give me some advice. A while back, when he was about 8 months old, I noticed tiny little bumps all over underneath his skin that seemed like little fat pockets, and I became concerned about histiocytosis then. Plus, his face developed a few bumps that looked like hives. I took him to my vet who didn't have an explanation, but he did some bloodwork and everything was normal, so he decided it might have just been an allergy of some sort. Eventually the bumps went away, and he really didn't have any problems until about 3 weeks ago, one of his eyes starting running contantly, and I noticed he was chewing on one foot that had a weird bump between two toes. The vet said that the eyes were probably just a conjunctavitis that he picked up somewhere, and gave me eye stuff for that. Then, last week when he woke up one morning I noticed one of his eyes looked really puffy and weird. A few hours later I noticed his testicles were swollen to about 3 times the normal size, and then suddenly his face started to get bumps all over it. This all happened very quickly, probably over the course of an hour. Eventually his face just swelled like a balloon, so much so that his eyes were practically unable to open. I thought that all of this was some sort of allergic reaction, so I immediately gave him some Benadryl, which definitely helped with the swelling. About 4 hours later, however, the Benadryl was starting to wear off, and the swelling was returning. This time his ears got very thick and swollen also. At this time I also noticed that he had developed small hive-like bumps all over his body, much like the ones I had seen before. More Benadryl didn't do anything, and I was afraid his throat might swell, so I took him to the vet. They gave him a shot of Vetalog (a type of cortisol?) which did not really help anything within 15 minutes, so they gave him a shot of more Benadryl. The benadryl helped a little, but mostly because it put him to sleep so he stopped itching, it didn't really seem to decrease the swelling or bumps that much. They didn't know what else to do for him, and figured that he was at least on the downward trend of his symptoms, so I went home with him. The next day the facial and testicular swelling had decreased significantly, although he still was not back to normal, and his eyes were still pretty puffy. Also, at this time I noticed small, red, pimple/hive like bumps on the insides of his ears. These seem to be very similar to what is described for cutaneous histiocytosis, and I'm wondering if you could tell me if any of this sounds familiar to you? Also, do you have any pictures of the bumps that your dog got? Thank you so much for any information you can give me! - Tiffany
Honestly, this is pretty radical compared with what Apache went through. His progression what gradual, but scary. I don't have any clear pictures of his bumps, but they were just swelling under the skin (hard, about the size of M&Ms). The only way I got a diagnosis was when the vet took a biopsy to send out (which is my suggestion for you, then you will know). There are many different variations of this type of disease, but they're all pretty hard to get a diagnosis for. What you are describing sounds somewhat familiar, but not related to the CH - instead related to what he goes through when he eats chicken or beef - his allergy response is off the charts (ears swelling, etc..). Does your Berner have allergies? Have you contacted your breeder? Aparently Berners are pretty high on the list with this disease.
Good luck & let me know what your vet says.
Annette
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