New Walking Partner

Since losing Major I have not had a dog with me on my morning walks. I set out at 5 a.m. and walk 4 miles, which takes me about an hour. I'm not truly a morning person, because if left to my own devices I'll sleep until 10 a.m., but for the past 8-9 years or so I have found that if I like the solitude of exercising when nobody is around, and I don't have to worry about cars constantly passing, etc. My street is pretty busy during daylight hours and when I walk then I'm constantly getting over onto the shoulder to avoid them, especially when walking a large dog. At 5 a.m. I have to contend with the paper delivery man (who, incidentally, tears around the neighborhood and you need to watch out for his mini van) but otherwise it is quiet, dark and peaceful, and I can walk right in the middle of the street. I also see quite a few shooting stars throughout the year, which is a bonus! Lately, however, I without a dog to accompany me it has not felt right going alone, especially since it is so dark.

My next-door-neighbors have an Akbash/Great Pyrenees mix, Ellie, who is a very laid-back and calm dog, and she's also really good on leash. I have been meaning to pick her up and take her along with me, but I never did before, mainly because at 5 in the morning I did not want to disturb their sleeping household by coming in and collecting the dog. However, I decided now was the time, and the family was all for it. They are busy, with 6 young children and careers, so they are happy for me to get the dog out and exercise her.

Ellie's breed mix means she is a guard dog and though she is not as "guardy" and independent as many of her breed, she is still protective of the house and the children, and though she knows me well and likes me, someone coming in the door in the dark might not sit well with her. The first morning M, the mother of the house, got up and was there when I came over to get her, so Ellie would know this was a sanctioned activity. The second morning, this morning, nobody was up and Ellie barked, but not too much. She was timid, but I coaxed her out and she let me put the leash on and off we went.

Ellie seems a bit insecure in general, being leery of the tall trash bins that are rolled out to the street on trash day, and also leery of other pedestrians I pass in the dark. She needs more confidence and I think these walks will help, and the exercise is good for her too, of course. When we see someone coming (there are a few others I see regularly who walk at the same time as I do) she might stop in her tracks and wait, and I talk to her in a sing-song voice and encourage her that we are not concerned about these other walkers, and they are friends, and she need not worry.

This is a new activity for Ellie and I think any dog would be a little bit on edge walking in such thorough darkness and quiet, but especially for a guard dog, who has a genetic predisposition to scan the horizon and check for intruders. Her breed is typically kept outdoors with livestock, especially sheep, where they protect the herd and monitor for trouble. At night they might be especially on guard for trouble from foxes or coyotes. Ellie does not have duties like that, of course, but she cannot deny her heritage, and I have to take these things into account when working with her.

So far, anyway, she's done great. She does not pull on the leash at all, not even a tiny bit, and she is a pleasure to walk with. She has the stamina to go at a leisurely pace for an hour (she's leisurely with her long legs - she's a big dog - while I'm scrambling away as fast as I can on my little bitty short legs) and she seems to enjoy it.

She is a large breed dog so I will check with the family and be sure she does not have any new aches and pains that they have noticed, since there could be potential for things like hip dysplasia and knee problems, but she's not a cumbersome dog and this routine ought to be easy for her.

It is therapeutic for me to have a new dog to accompany me, and maybe I can help her with her timidity and minor insecurity on these walks. Trucks drive by, people walk by, dogs bark from yards and houses, trashcans loom and strange sounds emit from storm drains, plus there are so many interesting smells, and once she grows accustomed to the routine I think she'll gain some confidence. She is a really great dog with very calm and relaxed energy, in general, so I'm looking forward to the coming days as we get used to each other. So far she's not given me any problems at all.

A Major Goodbye

It is with a sad heart that I announce the passing of Canis Major, who turned 3 years old on March 30, 2013.

Major has been a wonderful pet from the very beginning, a bit aloof but that is often the case with bullmastiffs. He was very easy to train and we had few problems with him as a puppy, other than what we called "dietary indiscretion," or swallowing his chew toys instead of just chewing on them. That gave us a few scares, but he never had to have intervention by the vet and he outgrew the habit.

He was never neutered, because we wanted him to achieve full size before we did so, but once he did, we saw no need to put him through it, since he exhibited no behaviors that were caused by being intact. He never marked in the house, never showed aggression towards our neutered male Great Dane, never escaped in search of a female in heat, and was a wonderful dog. He had such great conformation and a really great head that we were even considering showing him, and were looking into taking some conformation classes to that end, so we continued to hold off on the neutering procedure. We certainly did not want any accidental breeding, and neutered males don't have problems with their prostate, etc., but it was a topic on the back burner, so to speak.

In fact, he obtained his Canine Good Citizen certification at the age of 10 months at a Pet Expo, which is a chaotic affair in a convention hall, with hundreds of dogs, many of them agitated, overexcited, barking, etc., not to mention people in mascot suits representing businesses and sports franchises, contest announcements over loudspeakers, and, in general, lots of distractions. When we first got there he was a bit alarmed, so we just walked around for a while until he grew accustomed to the crowds of people, dogs and noises. We knew that if he didn't pass the test that we could not blame him, under those circumstances, and we could try again at the obedience school under quiet and calm conditions. He passed, though, and we could not have been happier!

He matured and became even more amazing to us, mainly for his ability to ignore distractions in public, including dogs nipping at him, lunging at him, barking at him, and otherwise showing fearful aggression to him, which is a very common thing to happen to bullmastiffs, in my experience with them. I have had this happen with all three of mine, and it must have to do with their large size and smooshy faces. He ignored every incident and never responded in kind.

One memorable story is when we went down to Mobjack Bay for the annual Memorial Day family reunion. We brought Major, because we love taking him with us and he always enjoys new experiences. He was always easy to travel with, and settled in no matter where we went. My cousins have dogs, and theirs are always friendly and relaxed, going into the water to swim or just hanging out with everyone. They all get along and are happy go lucky dogs, mainly spaniels and a couple of corgis, and a mutt or two. Well, when Major arrived these dogs were NOT happy. I've never seen them act this way. "Intruder alert!" was the call sent out by the dogs. We got them settled down and everyone was relaxing, when after about an hour we hear commotion and the dogs had all ganged up on Major and had him surrounded next to the woods, and he was bitten on the ear and on the hind end. He did NOTHING about it. He just stood there, confused, until we got the other dogs under control.

I decided to leave at that point, because even though Major was not misbehaving, the other dogs just could not accept him being there. I'm sure there could have been some better way we could have introduced them to each other, in a more canine ritualistic fashion that would have prevented this, but we didn't, and I regret that. The dog owners were scattered around, doing other things, and it would have been hard to line everyone up with their dog for a controlled meeting.

I admired him a lot for how he handled that nasty situation, and I can't tell you how relieved I was. It could have ended very, very badly. If that had been one of my other two bullmastiffs (I would not have allowed them to be loose with unfamiliar dogs in the first place, however) they would have definitely retaliated and likely killed at least one of the dogs. Major always kept his head.


The Beginning of the End

Ever since the weather cooled down last fall I have been taking Major on my morning walks, which are 4 miles long and take an hour. I was so happy about this, because he is an angel on lead, no trouble at all, and he was actually able to do it. My other two bullmastiffs were not capable of long walks like this; they would have to stop and rest and would be sore and stiff later on. I really started it last spring, but once the weather got to the point where it was 70 degrees before sunup it was too hot for him - he had trouble keeping himself cool with the type of breed he is and the short muzzle. It didn't matter how cold it was, but it had to be below 70F. We resumed again in the fall.

We noticed he had lost some weight, a very small amount, and we thought it was because of the daily walks. We gave him a little extra kibble in his bowl at mealtime and didn't think anything of it. Around the middle of March one morning he could not get up. He was completely lame. What? We had no idea what could be going on. It seemed neurological or something - he had no control over his legs and could not balance on them. Then he had bleeding from the penis. Oh boy, this is not good. He was also off his feed, and was noticeably skinnier. We took him to the vet and he could not really find anything amiss, especially since the lameness had resolved by then. He gave him antibiotics for a possible bladder infection (the prostate was ok) and an antiinflammatory, Rimadyl. He seemed to improve. The blood from the penis resolved and he started acting more like himself. He would intermittently have lame paws, which varied from the front to the back with no pattern and no sign of injury. He would have days when he'd eat, and days when he wouldn't. We started giving him more delicious food, the kind that is like a deli salami and canned that looks like beef stew. Sometimes he'd take it and sometimes not.

We went on vacation and he seemed pretty good, and the neighbors took care of him while we were away. He ate for them, and ate for us when we got back. The Sunday after we got back he had a bad night, not eating, and acting like he felt very poorly. Monday 4/8 we took him to the vet and he could not find anything wrong, though the dog was obviously ill with something. He poked and prodded and listened and took his temperature, and could not detect anything. He was not dehydrated. He decided to draw blood to see if anything came up abnormal.

Tuesday night he called with the blood results and they showed kidney failure. Complete. Chronic. The numbers were creatinine 11.2, BUN 230, phosphorus 17.7. These are very high numbers, and the vet indicated that the phosphorus being so high was an indication of chronic disease. In his case it was likely congenital, considering his youth. He never showed any symptoms of kidney failure, so we were all quite shocked, most of all the vet. Most dogs drink a lot and pee a lot and have bad breath when they have renal disease, but he never did. His symptoms just did not point to any specific pathology, and by themselves certainly not kidney disease.

The End
That night the vet and I agreed that I'd bring him in the next morning and we'd do an IV flush and try to perk him up and get him to eat, and though we knew his condition was fatal, we could give him a bit more time. This was a brand new diagnosis but he'd seen dogs do well with this interventional measure. Well, Major went downhill quite drastically that night. He began panting a lot and snuggling up to us, and over the course of the evening and into the next morning we knew he was a goner. Rick and I took turns staying up with him as he suffered through seizures, disorientation, apparent hallucinations, unconsciousness, fits of activity, etc. He was lying on the porch outside the screen room and I thought he was just about gone, when he dashed up and crashed straight through the porch screen, knocking aside the glider rocker and flailing through the wood pile. Horrible. I waited until he had stilled, standing on all fours and panting, and guided him down again to rest. This is when our other dog, the (nearly) Great Dane, Sirius, began to get extremely anxious. He was giving Major his space earlier in the evening, but now he really knew something was horribly wrong. I had to put him in his crate, so anxious was he to get outside and see what was going on. This incident was at about 5 a.m. and the vet's office didn't return my phone message until they opened up at 8. They spoke to the vet and we agreed to meet at his office to put Major down - there was really no hope for him and he had suffered long enough.

I wish I had been able to put him out of his misery earlier, but when I spoke to the vet the night before he was not doing that bad, and was certainly comfortable and just lethargic. We could not have predicted his rapid deterioration. It seems like the minute I was given the diagnosis that's when he started to actually go into kidney failure, not before.

Looking Ahead
I know it is just a dog, and the world is filled with dogs - too many won't ever have a loving home - but this was a member of our family. His absence is like a void and we're all sensitive to it. The household dynamic has been altered, and after only 3 days we have not accustomed ourselves to things. I still see him out of the corner of my eye, I still tell the girls to "feed the dogs!" (instead of "the dog") and I still expect to see him when I walk in the door. Even though both dogs were quiet before, it seems like there is a new quietness to the house. Sirius lays around like a throw rug, often not getting up to greet us when we come home, and I know he misses Major. We are giving him extra attention and love. It will take a bit of time for us to adjust, but it is tragic - Major was only 3.

We lost our second bullmastiff about seven months before we got Major, in January 2010, and she was just shy of her 4th birthday. She died at home in a similar fashion - very sudden, very dramatic and very agonizing. That memory is still fresh with me as well. She had a lump on her "armpit" at the base of her chest and front leg, and it was biopsied as a negative hemangioma, or blood vessel tumor, not dangerous. Ok, we were comfortable with that, since it was not large and we didn't want to put her through anesthesia and surgery, plus the expense, if it did not need to come out. It suddenly became much larger, and before we could get her into the vet, we got up in the morning and she lost control of her bowels in the house (she'd never done that) and began to cough up blood. She took herself outside and continued to cough up quite a bit of blood, and you could see she was dying. She could not put her head down, since that seemed to cause her airway to fill with blood. We called our vet and she came to the house and put her down in only a few hours, but it was horrible. Apparently this tumor was not benign, and was likely a sarcoma, which ruptured through the pulmonary artery and she basically was drowning from blood in her lungs.

We got Major after a long and careful search for a reputable breeder who shows and raises champions, and is well known in the bullmastiff world. She has bullmastiffs that live long and healthy lives. Major's sire lived to be 11, in good health all the way, and his mother, grandmother, aunts and uncles, not to mention littermates, are all doing well and healthy. This was a total fluke and we are just laid flat by it. We went to a lot of trouble to mitigate against bullmastiff health problems, after going through such trouble with Stella, who also had crippling orthopedic problems diagnosed when she was only 15 months. We knew she was poorly bred, so we vowed to take better care next time. Well, you can't predict such things and that's just how it goes.

The Upshot
Someone said to me, "Well, after this I sure hope you won't get anymore of those big dogs. They've been nothing but trouble!" As if it was a off-brand appliance or a car that turned out to be a lemon. "Yeah, I'll never get another Ford Pinto - I've sure learned MY lesson! Ha ha!"

It made me really examine why that statement got me so upset. I realized that big dogs are part of our family life, and we are not happy as a family without sharing life with them. They make us happy, and we feel unsettled and incomplete without them. It is like a big screen TV or a dishwasher:  you don't NEED them, and they can be expensive, but they make your life happier and more enjoyable. We're not hoarding animals or anything, and we don't put our dogs before our children or other household responsibilities.

So, though I can't bear the thought of bullmastiffs right now - it is so painful - we'll get another dog someday. It was ironic to us that the night after his passing we were watching TV and found some random and mindless movie, a comedy, that we could stare at and take our minds off our sorrow. The family pet in the movie happened to be a bullmastiff! We never see them, since they are very rarely in movies, ever. What are the chances? We had to change the channel, as we weren't up to it right then, of course, but someday.

I'm starting to think of the benefit of having only one giant dog. Our dog food bill is going to go WAY down, as will our vet bill and the dog hair situation is dramatically better (Major was fawn and I usually wear mostly black, so I was usually picking hairs off myself - Sirius is black and matches my outfits!). We'll save on immunizations, heartworm and flea/tick treatments, which are all more expensive for large dogs than average-sized dogs.

I definitely prefer having two dogs, and I miss Major more than I can say, but I'm trying to see the bright side of things. Sirius, the Dane, is not terribly easy to manage outside the house like he used to be, though he's very, very good at home. He's very obedient and does not get into mischief of any kind, and I can stop him on a dime, point and snap my fingers and he's on his bed. An angel. But take him out of the house and he goes red zone, constantly scanning the horizon for trouble, and very anxious. He had an incident where a tiny dog chased us down the street, snapping at his face, and he picked it up in his mouth, shook it, and tossed it to the ground! Yikes! The dog ran off, and I since saw it being walked by its owners, who did not see the incident, as it was full dark and very early in the morning, so it was a relief to see it was okay. It changed Sirius and now he's a mess on leash.

I have tried many times to correct these behaviors so I can take him out more, but they have all failed, including professional help through the SPCA. I can take some of the money we are saving now and use it to find him a trainer, possibly a boot camp type program where they take dogs with issues and help them, then return them to you and show you how to manage their issues. I know he can be helped, and a lot of the problem is my own energy when we go out.  I yearn to take him for walks with me again, like we used to do, and take him to festivals and parks, like we used to do. I'll focus on Sirius for now and try to train a little bit of Major into him, lol.