K4JCW - Pet Pics

The K4JCW Pet Page

These are, of course, the obligatory pictures of one's pets that one must occupy disk space with. I'm told that no program is complete until it supports mail, and no web page is complete until your pets are posted (but apparently pictures of spouses, girl friends, girls you wish were friends, significant others, and the girl next door, are all optional).

These are pictures of my pure-bred German Shepherd, Anvil (also known as Anvil J. Pupster). As of 11/25/99, he's a little over 5 1/2 years old. He looks like he should weigh 110 pounds, but he only toes in around 85. He does have enough hair to build 2 or 3 more dogs, however. Click the image for a larger version.

(I've only got one picture of Anvil, click here to view it)

These images are of our other Shepherd, Sunshine. We got her when we lived in Stone Mountain, and the neighbors got busted for cocaine. We woke up to find the GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation), FBI, ATF, DeKalb county SWAT, and DeKalb county cops all pointing weapons at the neighbors house. Seems our guy next store was 2nd on the FBI's most-wanted list for 4 months (they didn't get him in the bust, though). The cops were going to send the dog to the pound, so we rescued her. She's also the only dog you may meet with a pace-maker. That story is below her pictures. Click the image for a larger version.

Sunshine Pics Go Here

The fellow who bought Sunshine got her from a pet store, for use as a guard dog (although 'Kill, Sunshine!' doesn't seem as intimidating as 'Kill, Fang!'). She's AKC registered, but is most likely a puppy-mill quality dog (of course, someone once AKC registered a cat, so that doesn't really mean much). He took good care of her, but didn't interact with her much, so she wasn't very socialized. It took my wife 45 minutes to coax her out of the yard and on to our porch. Another 30 minutes of coaxing and food-bribes got her into the house.

I guess I should have known how unique she was when I tried to find the vet the drug-dealer used. I called the county with her rabies tag number and asked for the number of the administering vet. I started out with "I have an unusual story here: I got this dog in a drug bust...". The lady at the county said they don't normally give out the vet's number to mere citizens, but she'd make an exception.

Armed with the vet's phone number and Sunshines rabies tag number, I called the vet. I started with "I have an unusual story here: I got this dog in a drug bust...", at which point I was interrupted by the girl with "Oh! You've got Sunshine! Is she OK?" It turns out they had heard about the bust on TV, and knew the guy who owned Sunshine. They said he took good care of her, but the knew she was bought and maintained with drug money. I asked about her health records, and they commented that she was fine. If they only knew...

Sunshine seems to be somewhat genetically deficient. When we first got her, she had problems with her paws. We had to soak her feet in the same chemical they use to kill heartworms in cattle, at about the same dosage. For several years, she was in fair health, with only a few minor (and frankly, typical) problems.

Then, on a Thursday afternoon around Thanksgiving of 1998, she suddenly got listless and lost her appetite. Although she is the consummate chow-hound, this happens, and it was attributed it to an upset stomach. By Friday evening, she hadn't eaten at all, and we were getting pretty concerned. She went to the vet Saturday morning, who was hell-bent and determined that the dog should have Cushing's disease (some kind of liver disorder). The vet, of course, closes early on Saturdays, and is closed Sunday, so Sunshine went to the emergency clinic to be monitored.

The emergency room did X-rays, and decided she might have an enlarged heart, but didn't have the ultra-sound equipment to properly determine this, so it was off to the UGA (University of Georgia) vet clinic on Monday. When my wife got her to UGA, the dog was fainting every 3 minutes, and had to be carried into the clinic. A few tests, and, good news! The heart wasn't enlarged. No, instead it was the two chambers of heart were not firing in the proper order. Ultimately it was determined that the conductive tissue between the atrium and ventricle chambers of the heart wasn't conducting. Normally, the atrium sucks up a load of blood, pushes it into the ventricle, and milliseconds after if pushes the blood, the pulse propagates through this tissue to cause the ventricle to contract, pushing the blood out into the arteries. Not with her! Fortunately, the ventricle builds up a little charge of it's own, and if the charge isn't 'cleared' by the atrium firing the ventricle, the ventricle will fire on it's own, except it's out of sequence with the atrium. This caused enough blood to be circulated so her brain (as far as we can tell) wasn't starved for oxygen.

All this was determined after numerous tests, ultra-sounds, poking at the dog, etc. At some point slightly before Thanksgiving, it was determined that the dog would need a pace-maker. Naturally, Sunshine, being the dog she is, had to pick a holiday to have her medical emergency. Seems that the representative for the company that donates the pace-makers was on vacation, and wouldn't be back until the Monday after Thanksgiving. So Sunshine gets to spend her time in an oxygen pressurized crate, she's got two IV's, each one with three drugs being pumped in, and a wireless telemetry pack to monitor her heart and respiration. Monday rolls around, and the representative calls in to say he's had a death in the family, and won't be in until Thursday. Once he gets back, there's a people emergency he has to deal with (as if my dog were some second rate citizen! Ha!), so we wait some more.

In case you're wondering why she was getting six drugs in her IVs, one was to cause her heart to beat normally. If she was off this for more than 2 or 3 minutes, her heart would resort to misfiring. Another drug was a powerful broad spectrum antibiotic. She had an elevated white blood cell count, indicative of an infection, but the infection could never be localized. One of the drugs was an anti-nausea drug. She wasn't eating much, and it was suspected that the antibiotic was making her a little queasy. Yet another one of the drugs was to regulate her heart rate. The other two? I can't remember...

At UGA, when a pet is brought in, a graduate student is assigned to the animal, and is the 'primary care giver'. The GS does the majority of interaction with both the pet and the humans, comes up with a recommended course of treatment, then consults to a board certified vet, refines the treatment plan, and then presents it to the people the pet owns. Our GS was a young lady named Marissa. Sunshine, Cindy (my wife) and I all took a liking to her, and she to Sunshine (I'm presuming she liked us, too). I asked lots of questions that (apparently) normal people don't ask, which sent her scouting for answers. In every case, she found out what we needed (or wanted!) to know.

Surgery day rolls around for Sunshine, and as the tech's are wheeling her into surgery, they're all grouped around her singing 'You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...'. They put her on the anaesthesia, and *boom*, the dog goes into cardiac arrest. All the students are shoved to the back of the O.R., the dog has her chest cavity split open, fur flies everywhere, and a surgeon starts performing heart massage until they get her stabilized. Meanwhile, Marissa is in the back, clenching her fists, and repeating 'Sunshine can't die, Sunshine can't die.' over and over.

The surgery is completed and declared a success. Sunshine spends a week or so in recovery, and after a while, starts making rounds with Marissa. Sunshine is the sweetheart of the UGA vet staff, and very well known. Dog gets to come home, with half her body shaved (belly and chest for surgery, legs and throat for IVs, and halfway up her sides for EKG pads). My other dog hasn't seen her in so long he barks at her and goes nuts with joy. It's all very touching. (By the way, only about 150 dogs a year get pace-makers, nationally. UGA does 2 or 3 of them a year. Often (and in our case), the pace-makers and leads are donated by the manufacturers. While pace-makers normally last 10 years, they can't be installed in humans after a year. The companies are kind enough to donate them to the vet schools.)

After a period of recuperation, Sunshine is like a new dog. She has more energy than I ever remember, and seems more lively. She also developed some new habits. My favorite is that she now howls when Anvil does (and that's every time he hears a siren, on TV or on the road). While Anvil has this beautiful baritone howl that can last a good 15 seconds without a breath, Sunshine is like a creaky old door that needs a good dose of WD-40. It's quite amusing!

For about a year, she's been fine. She recently went through a small ordeal again about 1 month before Thanksgiving on 1999. She started acting oddly again, so it was off to the vet, then off to UGA. They found her white blood cell count to be up again, and she went on another regimen of antibiotics. This seemed to blow out what ever it was, but her liver enzymes are still up, and the vets can't find anything wrong. We've been wondering if this isn't a flare up of whatever may have originally caused her heart problem (which the vets think may be infection related).

I have to say that for a free dog, Sunshine has cost me a helluva lot of money. But when she comes up and looks at you with those big brown eyes, and asks to be petted, I have to believe that this dog is grateful that she didn't wind up at the pound. We don't have (or want) any kids, so we decided we would make the investment to try keep her alive, as long as her quality of life would remain good. And so far, it's still a lot cheaper than sending a kid to college... We don't know how long she's expected to live. Shepherds typically live to be 12 to 14 years old. If she makes it to 8 1/2, we'll feel like we got a good return on our investment. (Here's an interesting way to depress yourself: If you have an animal that needs vetting frequently, amortize the cost of the vetting from now back to the day the vetting was done. Sunshine is currently around $600 a month!)

If you'd like to know more about dogs and pace-makers, or are looking for recommendations for the UGA vet clinic (or want to donate to the Sunshine medical fund!), please feel free to e-mail me.

Oh, and my other dog, Anvil? He's virtually maintainence free, except for a montly visit to the groomers, and regular shots. Sure hope it stays that way...