From the beginning

April 2009, I received a phone call from a very distraught woman.  She had a 10 month old male West Highland white terrier puppy whose rear legs were paralyzed and who was also hemophiliac.  Her husband had recently died; she had to go back to work and just could not provide for Ralph.  Would CWHWTC Rescue take him?  Without hesitation, I said yes.  Little did I know what we were getting into?

His first day with us - what a sweet boy

Paul and I drove down to get him the next day.  He was such a happy puppy but so sad looking.  He had been spending most of his time in a crate.  When out of the crate, he either bounced along on his bum or pulled himself forward like a seal pup.  Due to this peculiar mode of locomotion, he had no hair on his back end; his tail looked like a rat’s tail and was permanently tucked under him.

A little history here:  he was taken in to be neutered; the vet had no idea he was hemophiliac.  Hemophilia is not a disease that typically runs in West Highland White Terriers so there was no reason to suspect the neutering would be anything other than a routine surgery.  The surgery site would not stop bleeding which led to the hemophilia diagnosis.  He bled into his spinal cord area which caused the paralysis of his rear legs.  As a result of all this, he was also incontinent and had no bowel control.

I held him in my arms on the way home.  He gave me wonderful puppy kisses but at the same time shook like a leaf.  What were we going to do with him?

First thing we did was set up an appointment with our vet for an evaluation.  The vet was very pessimistic – Ralph would never walk again.  We went home and talked about the options.  We would get him a doggie wheelchair and we would take him to canine rehabilitation.  I had just heard about this wonderful canine rehabilitation facility and rehabilitation vet just minutes from our home.

First time in the wheelchair

We took the measurements and ordered a custom made wheelchair from Eddie's Wheels in New York.  Two weeks exactly to the day, we received the chair.  This was the same day we had our first appointment with Dr. Leslie Woodcock, Woodcock Veterinary Services, the rehab vet.  I took Ralph in; she examined him and watched him move around.  I mentioned that I had just received his chair and that it was in the car.  She told me to bring it in.  Dr. Leslie helped me get Ralph into the chair and adjust it for him.  After watching him move in the chair for a few minutes, she said – Ralph will be walking in six months and I will buy that chair back from you.  Wow, I could hardly believe those words.  We started going for rehab treatments once a week.  This involved Ralph walking in the underwater treadmill.     Watch the video of his first time In the treadmill.

Each week, he got stronger and could go a little longer.  At home, he was going for walks in his chair every day and soon he could pretty much keep up with our other two westies, Pearl and Gerry, on our daily walks.

Taking care of Ralph’s feet proved to be another challenging issue.   One of the first times we took him out in his chair, he came back and his back toes were bleeding a lot.  We hadn’t realized that, even though his legs were doing a walking motion, his feet were dragging.  I was a bit panicky – was he going to bleed out in front of my eyes.  We were ill-equipped in terms of first aid supplies.  We ended up wrapping his feet in gauze and securing the whole thing with duct tape.  It eventually worked.  After about three days, his feet stopped bleeding. 

His new socks

He would quite often get sores on his feet that would bleed for a long time.  I got much better at bandaging his feet using gauze and vet wrap.  In the house, I would put socks over his feet and hold them in place with vet wrap. 

The balloon boots

We investigated various types of doggie footwear for him.  Dr. Leslie helped us with this.  Regular doggie boots were too heavy and prevented him from placing his feet properly on the ground.   She suggested balloon boots and they were perfect.  As the name suggests, they are shaped like balloons and are made of thin rubber.  They are a little difficult to get on the foot but once on they do not come off.  These are disposable boots meant to be only worn once but we found we could usually get two or three wears out of them.   From then on, we were very careful with his feet.  Walking on the grass doesn’t hurt his feet but as soon as we go on a hard surface, we make sure to put a pair of boots on him.

It was difficult leaving him during the day but we had to as both Paul and I were working.  However, due to our different schedules, he was only alone a few hours in the afternoon.  We set up an X-Pen in the living room with bassinet pads in it covered with soft fleece.  At this point, we didn’t know about belly bands so he just peed everywhere.  Within a short time, our carpets were ruined. 

The first traumatic incident occurred shortly afterwards.  He had been sitting on the couch beside Paul when something caught his attention and he flung himself off the couch.  In the landing he bruised his scrotum which caused his little penis to stick out and he could not retract it.  I didn’t think this could be a good thing so off we went to the vet – the first of many visits.  She said no, it was not a good thing as the penis has to stay moist at all times.  She gave us some ointment to put on it and then directed us to go to the drugstore and get this other ointment which was actually an eye drop ointment for humans.  I asked our pharmacist, Bob, for this ointment and explained why we needed.  He looked at me and said “really”.  Well, you had to be there to see Bob’s reaction. 

The next problem was that the two ointments had to be applied every two hours.  Well we were both working so that wasn’t going to work.  So I dropped Ralph off at the clinic on my way to work so they could apply the ointment every two hours and then would pick him up on my way home.  First major crisis was over with.

I was hoping to find a really good home for Ralph and I did.  A retired nurse in Winnipeg wanted to adopt him.  I thought – a retired nurse will be perfect.  So we made arrangements to fly Ralph out there.  We took him to the airport and left him in the hanger.  He looked so small and forlorn sitting in his crate in an otherwise empty hangar.   I cried.  But then he was in Winnipeg and being greeted by his new caregiver Donna.  She loved him from the start.  She lived in a condo building with an elevator so Ralph didn’t have to be carried around.  She took really good care of him; out several times a day in his chair for walks and at night she would put him in a tub of warm water and exercise his legs.  Pretty soon he started walking a few steps on his own.  Unfortunately Donna developed her own health problems and Ralph had to come back to Guelph.

Bob, our Westie breeder,  went to pick him up at the airport.  Because Donna suddenly had to go into hospital, she had left him with another person until arrangements could be made to get him back to Guelph.  This person did not take such good care of him and pretty much left him in his crate and didn’t clean him up.  When I took him out of his crate, I couldn’t believe his condition:  so filthy and smelly, covered in poop and urine.  But he was so happy to see us. 

We still hoped to find him a good forever home as we did not think we were the best ones to provide for his special needs.  We were both working full-time.  So we found another home willing to take him.   It seemed like a good home with someone home most of the time, very few stairs and direct access to the back yard.  However, after about a month, she called us.  She couldn’t take care of Ralph after all; he wasn’t getting any better.  So Bob went to pick him up.   He was so happy to see us; we knew then that he was here to stay. 

By this time he pretty much didn’t need his chair anymore unless we were going somewhere with hard surfaces.  And then, we discovered belly bands.  What a godsend.  They made life so much easier.  For those of you who don’t know, a belly band is a strip of cloth that wraps around the dog’s body and covers his penis.  You place a feminine hygiene pad in the band and it absorbs the urine.  Between the walking on his own most of the time and the belly bands, taking care of Ralph became much easier.

We had to stop using the chair when the snow came as the wheels would get all clumped up with snow and he couldn’t move. 

By this time, his hair had grown back, his tail no longer looked like a rat’s tail and he could actually wag it and carry it half-way up.  He loved running and playing with Pearl and Gerry.

For the next year or so, life went on with no major incidents.  We did struggle with chronic urinary infections but eventually we were able to get those under control as well.  He had a couple of relapses with his legs, probably due to small internal bleeds, but he would be back up within a few days.

The in the summer of 2011, we were at a quarry, swimming and having fun with some other doggie friends.   A few hours later, I noticed he was in distress and seemed to be having difficulty breathing.   A trip to the vet was in order.  X-rays revealed that he had fluid in his lungs; probably blood.  There was not really anything that could be done for him.  In a non-hemophiliac dog, the vet would do a tap to analyze the fluid and decide on a course of action.  This option is not available to Ralph.  They kept him overnight, monitoring his vital signs carefully.  The next day he seemed better and I went to pick him up and brought him home with strict instructions to keep him quiet.   During the night he coughed a lot and developed a nose bleed.  So it was back to the vet where he had to receive an emergency blood transfusion to replace the lost blood.  After receiving the transfusion, he rallied and we were able to bring him home with no further incident.

Shortly after, our three valiant westies discovered a baby porcupine on our daily walk around the farm.  That was very exciting until they realized it really hurt a lot.  Pearl, being a girl and more sensible, sniffed it and ended up with just a few quills in her muzzle.  Gerry and Ralph, on the other hand, were fighting over it.   It would pass back and forth from one to the other.  They both ended up with quills in their mouths and all over their faces with Ralph being the very worse.  Ralph has a high prey drive and would not let go.  Eventually I was able to get them back to the house and over to the vet for yet another emergency visit.  They had never seen anything quite like this:  three dogs at one time.  Three vets and several technicians worked on them for a few hours.  Because the porcupine was a baby, the quills were soft and many were transparent.  They could not see them in the Westies long white hair and so had to feel around to remove them.  Needless to say, this was a very expensive adventure.

In January of 2012, Ralph suffered the most serious relapse to date with his rear legs.  His knee was very swollen and he could not walk.  Off we sent to the vet.  We suspected some internal bleeding but could it be orthopaedic in nature.  We had him examined by an orthopaedic specialist who did not think it was an orthopaedic problem.  We then had a consultation with a neurologist who thought that it was likely a blood clot pressing on the sciatic nerve.   With this tentative diagnosis, we went back to using the chair and upped the rehab treatments to twice a week.  It took approximately three months for his legs to come back to the point where he didn’t need the chair anymore.

In April 2012, while we were on our walk, he poked himself in the eye with a stick.  Off we went to the vet.  It required 50 minutes of someone applying pressure to the area to stop the bleeding.  Once the bleeding had stopped, the vet was able to determine that there was no damage to the eye, it was a small flesh wound right below his eye.  So armed with some eyedrops and antiobiotics, I took him home.  His eye was itchy, so he would try and rub it and it would start to bleed again.  I would apply pressure to get it to stop.  So I tried to put a cone on him; he got really upset, his blood pressure went up and the wound started to bleed again.  So for the next three days, I spent a lot of time applying pressure to the areaa.  All his incidents seem to last approximately three days and sure enough, after three days, the bleeding stopped for good.

In May 2012, he woke up one morning and was very quiet; he just wasn’t himself.  He couldn’t walk very well.  He didn’t want to eat his breakfast.  Ralph never passes up food so I knew something was wrong.  I called the vet but they couldn’t see him until the evening unless it was an emergency.  At that point, I didn’t think it was an emergency but I would keep a close eye on him.  In retrospect, everything with Ralph is an emergency and I should just have taken him to the vet.  By the time we got there, he was starting to be lethargic and he hadn’t pooped all day.   His gums were pale.  The vet examined him and wanted to take an x-ray.  The x-ray confirmed her suspicions:  there was a lot of fluid in his abdomen, most likely blood caused by an internal bleed.  There was so much fluid that it was pressing his bowels down and back so he wasn’t able to poop.  Poor Ralphie must have been very uncomfortable. 

It is very difficult to find information on hemophilia and how best to manage the disease.   There are different types of hemophilia.  Ralph has what is known as Factor VIII hemophilia. In the course of my reading and discussions with my vet, I had learned that the only product to control the bleeding in Factor VIII is a drug called cryoprecipitate.  In Canada, it is only available from the Winnipeg Canine Blood Bank.   Since it has a shelf life of twelve months, I insisted that the clinic order some and have it on hand just in case.  We are fully aware that Ralph may not have a long Westie life; however, we would not want to lose him because the blood clotting drug was not readily available.

So back to the latest crisis.  He had to have two blood transfusions that night to replace the lost blood.  One of the technicians stayed up with him all night to monitor his vital signs.  The next day, he had two transfusions of the cryoprecipitate to bring the bleeding under control.   The problem with internal bleeding is that you can’t tell when it stops.  He rallied.  He perked up, his gum color returned to a nice bright pink.  Our Ralphie was back to wanting to be the center of attention as usual.  He spent a total of three days at the clinic before coming home.  Once again he had pulled through a crisis. 

Living with a dog like Ralph who has so many issues is a challenging and rewarding experience.  It is also a rollercoaster ride, both emotional and financial, as we go from crisis to crisis.

The Ontario Rescue Directory

Early in 2012, the people who put together the Ontario Rescue Directory were looking for a cover dog for the publication.  I submitted Ralph's picture and he won hands down.