From the beginning..........

We decided to start this blog because we recently learned our 9 yr old Sheltie, Jake, has a brain tumor (meningioma) in the brain stem, inoperable. Jake is our son, nothing less, and we are devastated. He's always been healthy, full of life and ironically, had recently even started training to become a therapy dog to bring comfort to others who are sick.

Suddenly, the first week of March he started leaning to the left and walking sideways. He was also coughing and gagging when he ate or drank his water. We struggled to figure out what could be causing all this....maybe he had Lyme disease (he did have a tick)....maybe he has an inner ear infection that's throwing off his balance....maybe the antibiotic he got for the ear infection damaged his inner ear......we had no idea. We actually thought the vet thought we were crazy since he couldn't even see the symptoms when we brought him there. Of course, whenever you bring your child or dog to the dr they're suddenly fine, right?

Things started getting better as soon as he was given steroids. He was given 2 weeks of dexamethasone and he was great! Then within 3 days of finishing the medicine he was flat, his limbs were stiffening and he started leaning to the left, tilting his head to the left and almost ignoring the right side of his body. Strangely, he would go from laying stiff as a board to popping up and barking as soon as someone comes to the door.

By 3-28 we're sent to an appt with a vet neurologist for further testing, we've officially outgrown our regular vet's knowledge base. In our next blog post we'll describe the testing process and our adventures through treatment options: specialty vets, doggie clinical trials and more........