Stories of Hope, Love and Joy

“Zerk” aka Xerxes, Barclay, Duke

Feb 1990 to the present

(and a “present” he is on a daily basis)

(Folks, I am going to tell you right now there is no way to be succinct when you are talking about the history of a miracle so please forgive me if this is long – if you don’t have the time to read it all I understand, just know that you always have to keep hold of “hope” and do not give up.  Seek out your resources and listen to your inner heart and hold onto determination.  Zerk’s Mom)

Living with this dog is like having every day be your birthday. At least now it is, however, it wasn’t like that in the very early days.  As glowing and grateful as we feel these days, let no one doubt we have ever forgotten the dread, worry, sadness, fear and anxiety of our first experience with canine epilepsy and all the twists and turns our desperate struggle took to try to bring the monster under control.  There was a calm before the storm and then a battle raged on we thought would either never end or would end badly – things got better and sometimes there were various crisis and each time we would wonder and hope and pray.  While we appreciated what we had already had together, we couldn’t restrain ourselves from begging for more time with him for we had never known another living creature such as this one.  Zerk is proof that miracles can happen and the miracles continue to this day.  Who knows why some of us are bestowed and blessed with those miracles and why some are not?  The thing is, if you never lose hope then you at least have a chance and maybe you can be as lucky as we are.  Zerk and I would wish that for everyone in gratitude for the blessings we have received.  We don’t know how long we have together but each day is so amazingly wonderful I am at a loss to even put it into words.  We have not forgotten what we went through to get to this point but we now choose not to focus on the battle but to rejoice in the outcome.

I met him on 02/28/98.  I was in my early days of a wonderful long time relationship working with GRRACE (Golden Retriever Rescue and Community Education) in Indiana and living in Lafayette, IN and got notification that I was about to get my very first Foster Dog.  So I went down to Greenwood, IN (south of Indianapolis) to pick him up from the owners who were surrendering him to rescue.  When I pulled up, he was chained up outside, alone, in the front yard.  The family and the new puppy were in the house.  I looked at him and he looked at me and something struck me immediately – his stare never broke and neither did mine till the people realized I had arrived and came outside to greet me.   I went inside and got as much info as I could on him.  Apparently he had landed in the Seattle Washington Animal Shelter in May of 97 and had been pulled by Evergreen Rescue, vetted, fostered and adopted out in about a month or so.  No one really realized at that time he had seizures. A big lumbering gentle giant of a dog, who was kind to all and well mannered and of a mature and settled age was a find and he found a home with a family with two very young children and was doing well.  Not long after being adopted, that family had to relocate from Washington state to Indiana and they made arrangements to fly him and set up a new household together.

Then the seizures began….and the food allergies and other health issues like being 40 lbs overweight but those things were nothing compared to the seizures.  Behaviorally and temperamentally he was fine but physically he had needs they could not manage, either financially or in other ways.  This was a family, on a limited budget and with only one adult working and two young children.  They cared about him and cared for him as best they could but they knew that he would be better off in another home and so they contacted Indiana rescue knowing it was not that feasible to return him to the rescue so very many states away that they had adopted him from.  The rescue here had their blessing and so to us he came.

When I left with him, I put him in the back seat and he laid there and kept staring at me in the rear view mirror the entire trip home – every time I looked at him, he was looking at me.  I knew right then and there this dog would never be adopted out, that I would adopt him myself.  There was just some kind of instant bond there and I knew I would do whatever was in my power to give him the best possible life I could.

He settled in well in our household with the cats and the resident Golden and everything was fine for over two months. It was like “Paradise”!! We almost thought that maybe he wasn’t going to have seizures anymore.  Perhaps something in the environment caused them that wasn’t in our environment?  So much time went by that we thought we were in the clear.  But one night, out of the blue, after nearly 3 months, I woke up thinking there was an earthquake.  No, it was only his head bashing against the baseboard in the bedroom next to the bed where he liked to lay on the floor.  Therein began our real struggles and we had no way of knowing at that time what we were in for.  Yes, it was indeed hell on earth, for him and for us.

Now I had read out seizures, talked to folks, done all kinds of web surfing although I didn’t even know about canine-epilepsy.com or the Epil-K9 list at that time but I had done my homework “just in case”.  Although it seemed I wouldn’t have to actually deal with it after all, I found out pretty quickly that my studies were just beginning.  Thankfully, I found that website and that email list and the wonderful people there gave me the knowledge and the courage, combined with phenomenal vet care in my area to get to a good place with this dreadful monster. Zerk and I are forever in your gratitude.

His pattern was to cluster grand mals about every 60 days.  A nice span between bouts but those bouts were hell.  We are talking about an average of 20 major seizure episodes in a 24 hr period with about a 10 post ictal period.  He paces, he pants, he throws himself at walls, stumbles, falls, eats everything in sight, wants to chase down the cats who he normally cherishes, does not have a clue who you are or whether it is day or night, he is in or out and through all this is constantly dribbling urine everywhere.   We were worried for him, our house was in absolute shambles and everyone was afraid.  Not just afraid, really scared.

So we got him on Phenobarbital and it was surprising how quickly it worked for him. He was at therapeutic levels in 3 weeks! We had his levels done and his liver profile done every 3 months like clockwork.  Luckily for us the liver was handling it well but his levels kept slipping so we finally got close to the point where we were maxed out on dosage and then all hell broke loose.  He had the “mother lode” of seizures” and we very nearly lost him.  This was 06/07/00 and I said we are not going to put up with this if there is any possible way!

Well of course I had been reading on the website and on the email list about Potassium Bromide so I told the vet I wanted to try that.  Well my vets (all 4 of them) knew nothing about it but they have great attitudes allowing that most vets in general practice really don’t know that much about this disease but by golly they can learn.  They did some checking and consulting and bingo – he’s on it!  Amazingly enough, in only a month he was at the therapeutic level on that drug.    We backed off the Phenobarbital very very slowly hoping to eliminate it completely but when we would get to a certain level he would start having what looked suspiciously like “partial focal” seizure activity so since his liver was fine, we finally decided not to fix what was not broken as they say and leave well enough alone.

To this day he has not had another seizure on this regime.  It has been over 5 yrs now.  He has food allergies, seasonal allergies, spots on his lungs, has Spondyliosis, some Laryngeal Paralysis and a problem with intermittent Brachycardia.  Yeah, he’s on lots of meds and it’s a day to day tightrope walk but the worse of all these things has been the epilepsy.  But somehow we have kept it at bay and the other things are managed in various ways and he just keeps on going and has a good quality of life and his happy and active – even at the age of 15 1/2. 

Funny, when we got him, the specialist at Purdue University gave him 6 months to a year to live and that was in the summer of 1998.  Who knew?  Why are we so lucky?  I don’t know but I am grateful beyond belief.  I think there are 3 things that puts the odds in “our” favor.  Our love for each other, the Epil K9 list and good vets. 

Zerk was named for a grease fitting which injects the lubricants into a machine to keep it working smoothly much like his arrival did into our household that had been wounded and was faltering before he joined us. Also it sounded like Xerxes which was his most recent known name.  We don’t even know anything about his early days or his original name. We traced him back as far as we could and even consulted several animal communicators.  He has seen his original younger “brother” Benny succumb to Osteosarcoma on 07/27/03 at that age of only 8, the approximate age Zerk was when he joined us 5 yrs earlier.  He has seen his two younger foster brothers Linus and Alex (only 10 months apart) grow from unruly half grown pups to males in their prime now at nearly 5 and soon to be 6 and to this day both showing him the ultimate respect while nowadays protecting him by walking alongside him on our property and marking over any of his “leavings”.  He only has to “whoof” at them if they get out of hand and they will at first scatter and then return to his side to lick and nuzzle him and then calmly walk behind him as though he is some kind of icon.  He has seen the middle aged cats who were with us when he joined us, leave us in 2001 only six months apart – one at age 12 ½ to a 3 yr. battle with Chronic Renal Failure and the other at 15 ½ to Cancer and he has raised the 3 infant kittens, all 6 months apart in age, who followed and are now grown youngsters.  He has survived a relocation and a bowel obstruction a week after me becoming unemployed and his brother dying of cancer that he had to have surgery for at the age of 13 ½.   He had surgery because he was going to die anyway so why not give it a shot and even though his bad heart stopped twice during surgery, he was restarted, the surgery was successful, he actually survived and recovered.

Just two months ago I came home one day at lunch to find him barely breathing and nearly dead from a stroke.  He was in ICU and on all kinds of heroic measures and to the vet’s credit, I told him this dog is not ready to go and he believed me and pulled out all the stops.  They did not think he would ever walk again but in 24 hrs after bringing him home he was up and doing his business as wobbly as can be.  When I brought him back for a 24 hr “recheck” they asked me what did I do to that dog because he literally pranced in the exam room!  I said “never mind that, what was in that IV because I really need some too!!”  I tell you, I am sometimes think I am going to croak of a heart attack or stroke before this dog does.  Oh you know the stress I am referring to right? Sure you do.  Is it worth it? You bet it is. 

So, we have a lot to be thankful for.  And we only wish everyone could be so lucky.  Maybe you who are reading this will be one of those lucky ones too.  Maybe not.  But it is not for us to know and all we can each do is our best armed with the resource and knowledge we have at our disposal and that precious thing no amount of money in this world can buy – “hope”.

No harm can ever come from having hope. It is one of our best weapons.   

Michelle Lyman, Zerk’s “Mom”

Midi playing

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor