[Dailydrool] Young Charlie is inexplicably himself again

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

Young Charlie is back to normal again. I don't know how or why it  
happened, but that's what's happened as of late last week. I walk in  
the door now, and he's back to running to get a toy out of his basket  
to bring to me. I sit at the table after dinner with Ken, and he's  
back to either hanging out in the same room with us or asking to be  
picked up and held on my lap. Last night he wanted to have his tennis  
ball bounced so he could practice catching it. As I write this, he's  
back to sleeping on his half of our desk instead of being in the bed  
across the room from me. He's back to being engaged with life and  
with us. No more plodding through the day or spending most of the day  
asleep on a bed and limiting his interactions with everyone. He  
hasn't done anything naughty yet, but I'm okay with that because he's  
clearly back "with" us again in every other way. His ears go up, his  
eyes are mischievous, and he's back to doing his little dance (rear  
end and head swing to the left, give a cheesy grin, swing to the  
right and grin, then do it again) when he wants attention.

Yesterday and today I took Charlie to the vet to have his urine  
retested. This is the second test the vet wanted to repeat because of  
funny results. Because it's an hour round-trip drive, I wish I'd been  
asked to come in to have the retests done on the same day. But it was  
just my luck that our very first appointment was scheduled for  
immediately before our vet went away on a short holiday. So the  
covering vet was concerned about the low glucose levels but not the  
"junk" in Charlie's urine, and our vet, when he returned, was  
concerned about both. Two vets calling me at two different times  
meant two different trips for retesting. So it goes.

Yesterday's urine retest, which the vet said he'd do with a needle  
stick in Charlie's bladder to ensure a clean catch, didn't happen. No  
one told me Charlie should come in with a full bladder, so we got  
sent home and told to come back the next day. Very puzzling. A vet  
can find a vein that's less than a quarter of an inch thick in a  
dog's leg or neck, but can't find a bladder unless it's full? It  
seems to me that a bladder has a lot more surface area to hit than a  
vein, especially a crooked basset vein. And little boy dogs always  
have something in their bladders. They never completely empty them.

But apparently the vet needs a full bladder, so I brought in a fully  
loaded one this morning. I got Charlie out of his crate at 7:00am,  
immediately carried him out to the car, arrived at the vet's five  
minutes after opening, and carried Charlie in. He didn't have a  
chance to sniff anything, let alone lose his load along the way. I  
told the staff that he hadn't peed or pooped at all that morning, and  
they told me they couldn't find his chart. Great. So then I told them  
that if he lost his load before they found his chart, I wasn't going  
to keep on driving him back and forth for this test; he could stay  
with them while he reloaded, and I'd pick him up after they got their  
sample.

Fortunately, it didn't come to that. They finally found the chart,  
and Charlie proved he does indeed have the muscles necessary for  
really, really holding it. This time the vet kept Charlie in the  
examining room and did the draw there instead of whisking him off to  
the back room where bad things happen. As soon as the vet and the  
tech began to restrain him, Charlie started screeching and writhing.  
He hadn't even seen the syringe yet. It was a little discouraging  
because we'd had a talk in the car on our way there in which I told  
Charlie what was going to happen, that it might hurt a little, and  
that it'd be over a whole lot more quickly and probably hurt a whole  
lot less if he held very still while it was happening. In one big  
basset ear and out the other. I was given Charlie's head/snout to  
hold while the tech pinned his upper body to the table and the vet  
got the bucking rear end. Charlie's chin turned red, his tongue  
turned purple, and he instantly shed about half his coat as he  
hyperventilated and cried his way through what could have been a very  
short procedure with a different dog.

Once again the vet made a comment about temper tantrums, and once  
again I thought that wasn't a very sympathetic or understanding thing  
to say. When you think something's going to hurt and you're scared,  
of course you're going to fight it. In the last couple of weeks  
Charlie's experienced two blood draws and now this urine draw. He's  
got a pretty good idea now that whenever someone in scrubs tries to  
restrain him he's not going to like what happens next, and why stick  
around for something you don't like? I think young Charlie deserves a  
lot of credit for merely struggling to get away and vocalizing his  
fear. He could be removing fingers instead.

Anyway, the vet did everything possible to today's urine draw but  
culture it. He said it was super-clean. No crystals, no blood, no  
sediment, no bacteria. Nothing to warrant culturing it. Nothing to  
warrant going on antibiotics either, so I'm glad we didn't do that  
last week when the option was offered. He thinks that the last urine  
sample had so much junk in it from exiting Charlie's body. Which now  
has me wondering, why, if we know that having a dog do the equivalent  
of pee in a cup is going to result in a contaminated catch, why don't  
we just do bladder draws in the first place? The next time the vet  
wants to test Charlie's urine for anything, I'm going to insist on a  
bladder draw and save myself the time and expense of having to repeat  
the test and Charlie the upset of a repeat visit. The bladder draw  
costs no more than the pee-in-a-cup procedure, and the catch is  
infinitely better.

I learned today that the thyroid test results are finally in, and  
they don't indicate underactive thyroid. Apparently Charlie's T3  
levels are only half a point to a point below normal and his T4  
levels are about the same only above normal. Considering that  
thyroids levels fluctuate all the time and Charlie's coat, weight,  
appetite, and mood are all fine, well, those results just don't say  
underactive thyroid.

So, we don't know why Charlie lost his sparkle for almost a month or  
what caused him to get it back again. I was blaming this stinking  
hot, humid, and thoroughly miserable weather we've been enduring  
since the beginning of the month, but it's still stinking hot and  
Charlie's back to normal. Maybe he had a bug? Maybe he was just out  
of sorts? It's a real mystery. I hope, though, that whatever it was  
is gone for good. Young Charlie thanks everyone for the drool and  
says it should be redirected toward hounds who really need it. We  
hope those hounds feel better soon.

Elizabeth