Remembering Thistle

The first time I met Thistle was during a snowstorm on February 16, 2001. Jim was moving in with me and arrived in Ashby from Pennsylvania in a snowstorm, pretty typical for New England that year. The dogs were safe and secure in his van, and the rest of his belongings were in a U-haul driven by his good friend John Pitman.

The first thing Jim did when he arrived, after hugging me of course, was climb up the snow bank that was piled against the backyard fence and hand me each of his dogs, one at a time, so I could put them down in the yard of their new home and let them relieve themselves in the maze of tunnels I had dug for them the previous week. It was thus that I met Thistle for the first time. Jim placed her in my arms, this small and precious bundle, and I welcomed her to her new home as I welcomed all the others. She dashed off excitedly into the snow and raced around like a puppy. Thistle was home.

Thistle was Jim's gift to me, and a very special gift she was indeed. He was doing agility with Polly and Caitlin at the time and brought Thistle with him as a gift to me so that I would have a dog to work with as well. Since Sage's retirement and Jim's arrival in my life, I had given up my idea of getting another puppy. Thistle was to be my new partner instead and I was very excited about our future. During those first few months together I learned how very sweet and special she was. Even if we were never able to do agility together, she was a dear and wonderful companion and I wouldn't have traded her for any other dog in the world.

When summer came she proved to be quick and bright and we began training in earnest in between games of squeaky ball, her absolute favorite. We kept training throughout the fall, but that winter was a dark one for all of us. In December we lost our beloved Emily, the reining Alpha of the pack. Then we lost Winston. And the winter was one of the worst winters ever. The snow topped our four foot fence making an easy escape route for our four footed friends. With Jim working in Portsmouth during the week, I dug a lot of moats around the fence that winter.

Throughout the fall, winter, and spring Jim and I were searching for a new home. We finally found a wonderful place that suited almost all our needs. It was spacious and private and had land we could eventually use for agility training. After some major excavating, landscaping, and fencing, we had a small but workable agility area. It was then that I began to train Thistle seriously, and then that I began to see the real potential in her. She was attentive and fast and loved training. I just knew we were going to make quite a team one day.

Thistle's first match was at the end of October and with the exception of a fly off on the teeter, she had a terrific run. Then in November I entered her in her first trial, a CPE trial at the All Dogs Gym in Manchester. She sniffed a lot during her warm up run, a gamblers sort of course, and didn't place or qualify. But she placed third and got a qualifying ribbon for her very first standard run. I was so pleased and really felt as though we were off to a wonderful start. In actuality, that wonderful start of ours was the end of our agility partnership.

In December Thistle began to have these unusual episodes that Jim thought were seizures and I thought might be disk related, and I never did agility with her again. The episodes were brief in the beginning. Thistle seemed to lose her balance and fall over, and for a few minutes wasn't able to get to her feet. Since she appeared to be completely conscious I never thought of seizures in the beginning, in spite of the fact that Jim did. I was convinced the problem was a disk problem. We took her to our vet and he did a complete blood workup. It came back showing that everything was in the normal range except for her albumin count, which was low and might mean liver disease. So we had an acid bile test done on her that indicated her liver was functioning normally. Having ruled out a liver problem, in February we took her to see a neurologist in Maine and when his examination proved inconclusive, we took her for an MRI. The MRI showed nothing more than a protruding disk at the base of her spine--enough of a protrusion that he didn't think it would be wise to jump her anymore. Everything else looked normal to him so he suspected her episodes were most likely a seizure disorder, like epilepsy. While I was relieved that Thistle didn't have anything horribly wrong with her like a tumor in her brain, thinking back, I was never really comfortable with the diagnosis. I constantly worried from that day forward that something else was going on inside her, something that might take her from us forever, and I used to pray and pray that it was just seizures and that we'd be allowed to have her with us for a long, long time to come. Something inside me just wasn't convinced that a healthy dog of six years should suddenly turn up with epilepsy.

With the neurologist's warning about not jumping Thistle fresh in my mind, I focused on the positive things: Thistle was a fun-loving, smart, and sweet pet. We could do tracking, obedience, and freestyle together. While I was very disappointed that we wouldn't be able to do agility together anymore, I knew we could still work together, have fun together, and be partners. Her health was the most important thing to me in the world.

Thistle went many months before having another episode. Just as we had almost forgotten all about them, Thistle suddenly fell over one day in May as I was getting ready to leave for work and wasn't able to get up. Since she was alert and conscious, I felt certain once again that it had to be a disk problem. This time, though, she did not pull out of it in a few minutes the way she had before. I held her, stroked her, and tried to comfort her, but she did not get to her feet again. I called Jim and then the vet, who told me to bring her in. By the time I got her there, it was almost an hour later and she was still unable to walk, flopped over on her side and trying to pull herself up. The vet said she was having Petit Mal seizures, they admitted her, gave her intravenous Valium to pull her out of it, and observed her for the day. She had a number of seizures while she was there, several more on the way home, and then a few more during the night. When I lifted her into our bed that night, I really thought she was never going to be okay again and I was heartsick. But by the morning she was better. She went out as happily as she always did, peed and pooped, and then ate a hearty breakfast. It was as if she had never been ill at all. The next day, per the neurologist's instructions, we started her on a dose of Potassium Bromide. It was our hope that her seizures would be a management issue and that with the Potassium Bromide working its magic inside her, she would be able to live a relatively normal life.

The next few months were hectic ones for me. In addition to taking care of the house and the dogs, I had new puppy Emma to exercise and train--no easy task that. It seemed to me at the time that Thistle was doing okay. She wasn't as playful as she'd been, didn't seem to have the stamina for more than a few rounds of squeaky ball, and she was a little needier than usual, always wanting my lap and my attention, but I attributed her behavior to the horribly hot and humid weather and to her being a little out of sorts because of the puppy. It never occurred to me that she might be seriously ill, that something catastrophic might be happening inside her brain. It never once entered my mind that by the end of the summer she'd be gone.

Life went on in its normal hurried fashion and on August 20th, I arrived home late from class with Emma, sat down on the sofa to cuddle with Thistle, and in the process I noticed that her head felt hot, as if it were on fire. I mentioned it to Jim but since she seemed okay otherwise, we didn't dwell on it and went to bed. About one o'clock that morning, Jim woke knowing something was wrong with Thistle. She was at the end of the bed, sitting up and staring, having some sort of seizure. Jim touched her head and told me later that he could actually feel the electrical activity inside. He woke me and we put her on the pillow between us, and together we sat up with her, kissing her, stroking her, and talking to her till she finally settled down and fell asleep.

The next morning she seemed fine. She got up as happily as she always did, got her good morning hugs and kisses from us, and sat on the edge of the bed waiting for me to open the gate so we could go down for first outs and breakfast. I opened the gate and all the dogs rushed down but Thistle remained on the bed. I thought it was awfully odd but shrugged and started calling her from the doorway, coaxing her to come to me. Eventually she jumped off the bed and started in my direction, but instead of walking to me in the doorway, she walked right into the wall. I remember saying to Jim, "That's weird. Thistle just walked into the wall." Then I bent down and rubbed and kissed her face, murmuring all my usual words of sympathy. Jim rubbed her face too but didn't know what to make of it. So I started down the stairs, calling for her to come with me. She followed me to the edge of the stairs and stopped, staring down but refusing to budge. I called her again and again. She paced at the edge of the stairs, obviously wanting to follow me, but wouldn't take a step off the landing. It was then that I realized, with shock and horror, that Thistle was blind. And so began the last leg of our final journey together.

The next two days were a blur to me so I may not get every detail in its correct order. We rushed Thistle to the vet that morning and he told us not to be overly alarmed, that it wasn't unusual for dogs to develop temporary blindness after having a seizure. Nevertheless, he wanted us to leave her with him to do some tests, just to make sure nothing else was going on. He did a complete blood profile on her, took x-rays of her liver, and gave her an injection of Dexamethasone. When we brought her home, with the exception of not being able to see, she seemed fine. She ate, she went out happily with the other dogs to pee and poop, sniffed and explored the yard as she always did, and joined the others inside when biscuits were being handed out. Basically, at that point I thought it was going to be a waiting game...take one day at a time until her sight returned.

On Friday morning she wasn't any better. In fact, it seemed to me that in addition to the blindness, she wasn't hearing anymore. The day before I was able to clap and call to her and she would find me. That no longer worked. To get her to come to me I had to stomp hard on the floor, and I believe it was the vibrations she felt that made her turn and come in my direction, not hearing the sound. Later in the morning when we went outside, she staggered a few times and seemed to be having trouble standing. It was extremely hot and humid that day so I hoped it was only the weather causing the problem and not her health getting worse. Our vet was perplexed. Other than an alarmingly low protein and albumin count, all her other counts were still in the normal range. He said if got worse that I should bring her right in. I was getting ready to go to work and had a bad feeling about leaving her home alone for five hours. So I ended up taking her to the vet's, knowing she'd be in expert hands if anything happened during my absence and confident she'd be well loved and cared for too while she was there. Since I had to go to work, it was a tremendous relief to me to be able to leave her there, like leaving her with family.

When Jim picked her up later that afternoon, he found out she had had two seizures while she was there, a focal seizure and then a full blown grand mal seizure. She was on Valium and out of it when he brought her home, and when I arrived and saw her, my heart just sank. I'd seen Emily and Cassie on Valium after a seizure or cluster of seizures before and this was different. Thistle wasn't with us and it had nothing to do with the Valium. Our vet had set up an emergency appointment with the neurologist in Maine the next morning, and while I still had hope that he would determine what was wrong with her and find a way to cure her, while I still had hope that she would pull through, I was really frightened. Unbeknownst to me, our vet had told Jim he didn't have a good feeling about what was going on with Thistle, and Jim agreed. I think that night Jim knew she was dying, but kept it from me.

Jim held Thistle in his arms, talked to her, and walked around with her for a while that evening, then sat down on the porch with her in his lap. She was unconscious and her breathing was labored, her exhalations coming out like quick, raspy barks. I'm not even sure if she knew where she was. Jim and I decided that we would take turns watching her that night, and I requested the first watch. Because we were afraid that if she had another seizure we wouldn't be able to reach her easily if she was in her crate, we made up a bed for her in our laundry basket and put it in the dogs' room with the air conditioning on to keep her cool. I sat up and watched her for a while, gave her some Reiki, then dragged a few cushions from the couch, set them up around the basket and laid down beside her, keeping a hand on her head in case she woke or had a seizure in the night. About 9:30 she started to have another focal seizure. She tried to get up but kept falling down and her eyes were darting back and forth rapidly. I called Jim, who was upstairs in bed with the rest of the dogs, and he came down and sat with me till she came out of it. He helped me give her an oral syringe of Pedialyte when she had settled down again, then went back to bed.

After Jim left us, Thistle continued to sleep in her basket, her breaths still short, quick, and raspy. About 12:30 she had another focal seizure. This time I didn't wake Jim. I sat with her till it passed, holding her head in my hands, and gave her some more Pedialyte afterwards. She drank it with awareness this time though. She was thirsty and kept wanting more. I took it as a real good sign. I thought perhaps she was finally coming out of the Valium and was going to recover after all. She suddenly seemed quite lucid and aware. She was even breathing normally again. I took the opportunity to talk to her. I held her face in my hands and told her how much I loved her. I told her all the things we were going to do together when she got well. And at that moment I truly believe with all my heart and soul that not only was she seeing me, she was hearing me too. She was looking intently into my eyes and really appeared to be listening to my words. She even licked my nose a few times. I believe she could see and hear me again not because I want or need to believe but because when I told her we were going to play "squeaky ball" when she was well again, her eyes brightened perceptibly, and to prove to myself that she really had heard me, I repeated all the things we were going to do together, and once again, when I said the words "squeaky ball", her eyes brightened noticeably. In spite of the fact that her response gave me so much hope, I also told her that even though I wanted her to get well again and come back to us, it was okay if she had to go, that no matter what happened I would always love her and be with her. She'd always be my little baby Wissie, always be my baby girl. I kissed her and held her and eventually she fell back to sleep, quietly at first, then her breathing resumed it's labored, raspy sound.

I settled down on the cushions beside her and fell into a light sleep, my hand still on her in case she woke in trouble. Twice I woke and turned the air conditioner down. Both times Thistle was still sleeping, breathing very quietly. The third time I woke, shortly before two a.m., it dawned on me that she was breathing so quietly I could hardly see her chest rising. I looked closer and listened, felt for her pulse inside her thigh. It was then that I realized my precious little angel had died, slipped away so quietly in her sleep that I didn't even notice the moment happening. I remember saying aloud, "Oh God, Thistle, I'm so sorry," and kissing her. Then I began to cry and went upstairs to get Jim.

We never did find out what happened to Thistle that night. Because she died in the middle of the night and our vet didn't open till the morning, we wrapped her body up and placed her in our basement freezer to preserve her till we could get her to the vet's. We had an autopsy done, but because we'd frozen her body, the pathologist could not autopsy her brain. All the other tissue samples taken from her were determined to be normal, and the urine acid bile test our vet had done on her while she was there on Friday came back the following week indicating her liver was still functioning normally too in spite of the fact that her protein and albumin levels were so low. So the cause of death was determined to be cardio vascular collapse due to a catastrophic event in the brain. What that catastrophic event was, Jim and I will never know. Seven months later, wondering about what happened to her is still haunting me, and I suspect it will haunt me till the day I die. Not knowing is pure torture.

Thistle was the sort of dog you couldn't help but love. There wasn't anything to dislike about her. She was sweet and gentle and happy. She loved everyone and everything and accepted all the changes in her life and the world around her with a sense of ease and eagerness. Until his death Winston had been my little shadow, following me around the house and making sure I never left his sight. When he died, I was bereft of something vital in my life, that unwavering veil of love and need that was a constant source of grounding and reassurance to me. Oddly, after Winston's death, Thistle took up that role. She became my little shadow, never leaving my sight or my side as if she understood the emptiness inside me and sought ease my pain by filling it. We were always together from that time on. She was my guardian, my dear and faithful friend, my blessing in times of sorrow or joy, and I thank the Lord that our lives were allowed to intertwine, even for so brief a time.

I will never forget or stop loving Thistle. She's with me still, in my heart, and that is where she'll always remain. Losing her was devastating to me. The death of a pet is always heartbreaking, but the shock factor of losing a young pet quickly and unexpectedly is a blow that literally knocks you off your feet, leaving you dazed and bruised and hurting. Not knowing the cause of her death has been agonizing too. It's hard to find closure when the answers you need for it just aren't there. I realize there are things that happen in this world which we will never understand, and that there are unseen factors and influences over which we have no control. I do not understand the reason Thistle was taken from us, but I do not doubt that there was a reason for it and that it was her time to leave us and this earth. I may be allowed to understand that reason one day. It is just as likely that I may never know. I do believe that the time she spent on earth with us was just a brief pause in her journey, and I hope the love we gave her while she was in our care will help to make the rest of her voyage a gentle and peaceful one.

See note below for an important update about Thistle

Notice:

In May of 2006 I finally discovered the cause of Thistle's death. What Thistle had was a syndrome called Episodic Falling, which is a syndrome of paroxysmal hypertonicity, sudden attacks of falling and muscle rigidity. It is a disorder that can often be misdiagnosed as epilepsy because of its seizure-like episodes but the difference is that the dog remains conscious during the episodes and the dog experiences pain. If the episode cannot be stopped it can be fatal.

Because of all the same reasons that Syringomyelia was ignored or denied several years ago, Episodic Falling has been spreading. There is research currently underway at the University of Glasgow to identify the gene responsible for EF. If it is determined that EF can be traced to a recessive gene then it is essential that all breeders discontinue breeding any Cavaliers who are carriers in order to stop the progress of this terrible disorder. To learn more about Episodic Falling go to:

http://cavalierepisodicfalling.com/

During one of the last episodes Thistle had I grabbed the video camera and filmed a portion of it so I could show Thistle's veterinarians and the neurologist exactly what happened to her during an episode and why I didn't think it was epilepsy. Three different veterinarians and the neurologist viewed the video and no one had a clue. It was determined to be epilepsy by basis of exclusion. I should've trusted my own instincts which were telling me all along that it wasn't epilepsy, that it was something else, but I still had too much blind faith in the veterinary community in those days. Instead of continuing to search for a veterinary professional who did have the answer, I allowed them to treat her as if she had epilepsy and continued to scour the Internet for the truth. If you are interested in seeing the video clip I took of Thistle that day, please click here to view the video of Thistle having an Episodic Falling episode. As you will see, Thistle was not unconscious during the episode. She was awake and aware of everything that was happening to her. I will warn you that it isn't fun to watch.

I belong to an email list group called ArnoldChiari_dogs, which is a support group for people who have dogs of any breed with Syringomyelia. It was in an email from a member of the ArnoldChiari_dogs group that I saw a link to a website with information about Episodic Falling. After I read the symptoms and watched the videos on the Episodic Falling website I knew without a doubt that Thistle had EF. The ArnoldChiari_dogs group provides an invaluable service to people who need comfort, advice or education about Syringomyelia. The experience and knowledge of the members and the information that can be obtained there is inestimable and I highly recommend the group for anyone who has a dog suffering from Syringomyelia. If you are interested in joining the group go to: 

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/ArnoldChiari_dogs/

This web page used to belong to a website I created as a tribute to my two dogs, Sage and Winston. Several weeks ago I discovered that AOL had shut down their AOL Hometown and Journals and deleted tens of thousands of AOL user files, including my website for Sage and Winston. I found out when I tried to link to my site and realized it was gone. Apparently AOL sent out a short email message to all of its users a month earlier saying that AOL Hometown and Journals would be shutting down permanently on October 31, 2008 and urging them to save their AOL Hometown and Journal content immediately. Unfortunately, I did not get the warning from AOL since I no longer use my AOL email account. I only used AOL because AOL Hometown hosted my website files and moving them to another site would've been a major hassle. Of course now that my files are gone altogether I realize moving them would've been a whole lot easier than recreating the entire website, but how was I to know that after 9 years of hosting my site AOL would suddenly shut it down and delete the files without making sure all of its site owners had been contacted? I guess I'll have to chalk that one up to experience...

I am truly hoping to get Sage and Winston's web page back online at some point in the future, but in the meantime I wanted to make sure I  got Thistle's Tribute page and the information about Episodic Falling online again as quickly as possible. This page generates a lot of traffic. The information about Episodic Falling and the video clip of Thistle having an EF episode is obviously of interest to many people. I hope it's also helpful to people in either ruling out EF as a possibility or confirming it.

I can be emailed at ajgregg@worldpath.net if you have any questions or comments.