Is it willful disobedience and noncompliance.... or is it an undiagnosed health issue? Part Three

This post is a continuation of a series; the first posts can be found here and here!

Trigger warning: pet loss and mention of euthanasia

Buddy was my sister Katie's second dog!

In the first few posts of this series I wrote about my younger dog, Phoebe, who ended up having bad hips, and my older dog, Regis, who started to go deaf. Both of them had multiple scenarios where they looked like they were "misbehaving" or ignoring me when in reality they had health issues that were impacting their behavior!

This is going to be the last post in this short series, and it is going to be about my sister's dog, Buddy. Some of you may have met my sister's dog Buddy or her current dog Ralphie in our puppy classes.

Katie brought Buddy home when he was somewhere between 12-16 weeks of age, we can't be sure. We met Buddy in a Petsmart in Palatine and Katie fell in love with him right away. In retrospect, I remember thinking he seemed a little too low key, borderline lethargic, but I thought he was overwhelmed by the environment, so I gave it a pass. We headed back to my sister's house with Buddy in tow after a shopping trip at Petsmart, and Katie got right to work on new puppy "stuff".

The first red flag with Buddy's behavior was his initial interactions with both of my adult dogs. He seemed alright at first, but we had a few small scuffles that did not seem like normal dog interactions. Buddy tipped into defensiveness quickly, and while it was over fast and there were no injuries other than a small cut on Regis' ear from puppy teeth, it was not normal behavior from a puppy towards adult dogs. We thought maybe he was overwhelmed, and gave him time.

Fast forward to the next week, Buddy joined my puppy classes and we threw all of our eggs into the "socialization" basket, figuring that Buddy just wasn't experienced enough with other dogs to communicate appropriately.

He played some, but it was never loose, easy puppy play. It was play that often turned into relentless humping, or pinning and not playing in a reciprocal manner with the other dog. We redircted, redirected, redirected to make sure everyone was having a good time . We practiced time outs to reduce pinning and humping and try to help Buddy regulate. We did everything we could to try and shape Buddy's playskills, hoping that we caught him early enough. While some days it felt like we were making improvements, the pace of improvement was glacial, and progress was difficult.

Buddy also continued to seem "lethargic" even at home, away from the busy Petsmart where we first saw him. Unlike other typical puppies who are constantly on the go and putting everything in their mouths (including hands and arms!), Buddy basically had one round of zoomies a day, and spent the rest of his days lying around. He chewed less than a typical puppy, and was NEVER mouthy with us, even as he lost his puppy teeth and got his adult teeth in. The vet brushed my sister's concerns off, saying she just had a calm puppy.

A few weeks in, Katie started to have issues with Buddy's bathroom habits. He would have loose stool accidents in the car on the way home from class, and then the next day in his crate (like... explosive diarrhea... everywhere). We figured maybe he just had a sensitive stomach, so Katie moved him to a bland diet of chicken and rice. He'd be okay for a few days, then Katie (or our dad!) would return home from work to find an absolute mess. He was tested for worms, tested for Giardia, given dewormer, given panacur, kept on the bland diet, but his stomach never really evened out until we found the root cause of these issues.

Buddy got older. He moved into our adolescent classes, and his play skills continued to prove difficult. He was never frankly aggressive (I would have dismissed him from our classes if this was the case, especially if I thought his behavior was negatively impacting other students), but he rarely listened to the other dogs and you could tell that the other dogs thought he was kinda weird. He was desperate to interact with other dogs but was awkward, and he had to be carefully managed and redirected when doing so. He had to be leashed often if he was sharing a yard with my dogs, as he would try to hump Phoebe (who has bad hips) and wouldn't listen when she told him "no", so we had to manage his behavior tightly for everyone's sake.

When Buddy hit around 10 months old, after many rounds of panacur, many rounds of dewormer, tons of diet changes, the vet finally put in for some more complex diagnostics and we unfortunately found out that Buddy had a liver shunt. Everything that Katie had been doing to try and manage his diarrhea was actually making it worse. Buddy needed a prescription LOW PROTEIN diet (so much for chicken and rice!), medication, and supplements to curb his gastric issues and ultimately needed to have surgery done on his liver shunt to give him a chance to live a healthy life.

Buddy was a handsome boy!

My sister, who is an amazingly committed dog owner, chose to pursue surgery to give Buddy as good of a life as possible. For a short while we had hope that things would continue to improve, but unfortunately the surgery was not successful and the shunt managed to grow around the device they put in. This meant Buddy's life would be shorter than expected, but we were able to manage his health and keep him feeling pretty good with the proper low protein diet, medications, and supplements.

And truthfully his behavior DID improve as he felt better with the medications and supplements. Buddy never became a GOOD player, but he was able to be less obsessive about my dogs, so we were able to ease up on management a little bit. Phoebe even started to play with him a little bit, which we never thought we'd see. Buddy made a few friends in our classes, although they had to be particularly tolerant dogs who seemed to really enjoy Buddy.

Buddy became a bit more active and playful; he was no longer lethargic, and he no longer had extremely loose stools. The healthier he became, the more he was able to behave normally.

Unfortunately a year or so later Buddy came down with an incredibly rare auto immune disorder known as masticatory myositis, where his immune system started to attack the muscles in his face. Buddy had to be put on a complex regimen of medications just so that he could open and close this mouth; these medications included a steroid that was not going to be good for his pre-existing liver issues.

For a while Buddy seemed to do okay with the medications for both of these diseases, but as the year passed it became clear that Buddy just didn't feel okay. Sadly, my sister had to make the excruciatingly difficult decision to let Buddy go at just 3 years old. His quality of life began to suffer, and it was clear that that would be the kindest choice she could make.

Three cousin dogs, learning how to be good together.

In retrospect we think a lot of Buddy's early behavioral quirks were due to the fact that he felt like crap most of the time, and possibly that his liver disease made it so that his body and brain didn't develop normally (the liver is responsible for handling the toxins produced by the body after all). Buddy's case is very sad, but he lived the best life he could with my sister always taking the best care of him and looking out for him. We all loved him, and I know he knew that.

In the end, all three of these dogs have taught me invaluable lessons that I carry with me into my work as a dog trainer.

Regis taught me to always be aware of health changes in senior dogs when training isn't working out.

Phoebe taught me that a dog being "stubborn" isn't always what it seems.

And Buddy taught me that good health is critical to good behavior, and that a sick dog's behavior will not change until the underlying health issue can be treated.

Our dogs are consistently one of my greatest teachers, and I can only hope to honor them and what they have taught me by giving them a wonderful life.

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