Sixteen pills

Full disclosure, sixteen pills wasn't my first choice for the title of this post. I was going to call it Carpé Canine. In case you’re not a fan of The Dead Poets Society, let me translate for you: sieze the dog.

Alright, penalty for reaching but this is a story about my German Shepherd Ace, who, if you follow me here or on any other social platform I ramble on, you know I post quite a bit about him be it words or pictures. But here’s something I don’t talk about very often—Ace’s sweet sixteen.

That’s not his age, although we’d be beyond happy if he makes it to sixteen. In this case, it’s the number of pills we have to give him every day.

Come to find out Ace has epilepsy. We didn’t know it when we got him from Westside German Shepherd Rescue six years ago. In fact, for the first three years he lived with us he was perfectly fine.

Then came that night.

It was about three-thirty in the morning, and the wife and I heard a loud thump in the living room, like a sack of potatoes hitting floor. We came running out of the bedroom to find Ace, where he’d fallen off the couch on to the floor, in a full grand mal seizure.

Even though I’d never seen a dog have a seizure of any kind, it was pretty clear what was happening.

He was foaming at the mouth, which was involuntarily and uncontrollably snapping open and closed. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and his body thought it was riding a bicycle, impossibly contorted with all four legs snapping in quick, jerky movements.

It felt like forever, but it ended after about three minutes. When he came out of it, he was definitely altered for about three hours after, going in and out of the house to the backyard over and over.

The wife and I didn’t know what to do. Every time he went out, he stumbled around the back of the house to the furthest point away from the back door. We thought he was looking for a place to die. Finally he came back and settled down a bit.

We took him to the vet later that morning, and he put Ace on a low dosage of phenobarbitol that would hopefully slow down his seizures.

To make a long story short—if that’s even possible at this point—he continues to have seizures to this day. After several, expensive neurological tests, various veterinary specialist visits and more seizures, he now has a sixteen-a-day pill regimen (the eight in the photo twice a day) consisting of phenobarbitol, zonisomide and keppra which keeps his siezures few and far between.

And when they do happen, they don’t last more than a couple minutes, and he comes back to himself quickly.

A few people, obviously not dog people, have suggested getting rid of him or putting him out of his misery. But he's not in any misery. When they happen, he's not aware of it and, providing it doesn't happen near something he can hurt himself on, they're not hurting him. Dogs with epilepsy can live full, normal lives with the right meds and lots of love—both of which Ace has.

Is his monthly medication expensive? Yes. Can you put a price on the unconditional love he gives and gets? No.

To those who say they couldn't do it, we offer this quote from Seabiscuit's trainer in the movie of the same name: "You know, you don't throw a whole life away just 'cause he's banged up a little."

Who's a good boy?

One cool cat

If you know anything about me — and if you don't, go back and read the previous twelve-hundred posts, I'll wait here — it'll be pretty clear I'm without a doubt quite the vocal dog lover. I love most dogs, especially the larger breeds. The kind that lets me send my kid to the liquor store at midnight and say "Dad needs a beer. Take the dog."

I'm particularly partial to German Shepherds. I'm currently on my second one, Ace, who was a rescue and is just the sweetest boy. And of course before him, there was the world's greatest dog, Max. You can read Max's story in the wonderful, moving, heartfelt, funny, beautiful labor-of-love book Gone Dogs, available here. Or here. And even here.

But despite being a dog person, I have a secret I don't tell many people. However given the readership numbers here I feel pretty safe in, shall we say, letting the cat out of the bag (sorry).

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I had a cat. Her name was Mr. Kitty. And I loved her.

The short story is Mr. Kitty was a stray who followed my then girlfriend now wife home and never left. So right off the bat we had something in common.

We named her Mr. Kitty because we weren't close enough to check out the equipment, so we went with that.

Mr. Kitty would show up at my girlfriend's door every night. We'd feed her, take her on walks around the block (she just followed us) and then bring her in for the night where she'd sleep on my head. We'd let her out in the morning when we were leaving for work, and she'd always be there to greet us when we got home.

When we moved into my apartment in Santa Monica, even though there were no pets allowed we brought Mr. Kitty with us. We'd hide her when the maintenance people had to come in, or when the fire alarms in the building went off and we'd have to walk down seventeen flights of stairs with her disguised under a blanket or in a box.

A close friend of ours who's a veterinarian estimated she was about four years old. She was seventeen when we had to say goodbye to her. So for thirteen years, I had a cat.

Who slept on my head.

Who I gave subcutaneous fluids to everyday for years for her kidney disease.

Who when she got seriously old and ill, I gave cat enemas to so she could do her business without straining or being in pain. This was something I could've gone my whole life without knowing how to do and I would've been just fine.

When my son was born, someone gave us a Moses basket as a gift. But we never used it for my son. We put it under his crib, and it became Mr. Kitty's bed when she got to be too old and weak to hop up on ours.

Not long after, the time came to say goodbye. We took her to my vet friend, and I held her on my lap as she passed. I cried every time I thought about it for weeks after. I still do.

So when people say I don't know what it's like having a cat, a small, knowing smile comes across my unfairly handsome face. I know they're wrong. I know exactly what it's like, because I had the coolest cat ever.

Which is the reason I don't want another one.

That, and the fact Ace has another name for cats. He calls them appetizers.

Max 2004 - 2016

It was love at first sight.

We'd known we wanted a German Shepherd because we'd already tried one on for size. We rescued a GSD puppy named Ruby. She was about 5-months old and beyond cute. What we didn't find out until after she bit my daughter in the face was she'd belonged to a homeless man and had lived on the streets since she was born. One day the owner of the rescue was walking by her, recognized Ruby as a pure-bred GSD, and bought her from him.

Once we brought her home, she slept on the bed with us. Nipped at our heels. And didn't take to training in the slightest. Then, on the fifth day we had her, in what was probably a bit of overactive puppy play, she decided to jump up and have a quick, light chomp on my daughter's face with her razor puppy teeth. She pierced her skin, drew blood and scared my daughter. So Ruby bought herself a one-way ticket back to rescue.

What we learned from the experience was we loved the German Shepherd breed. But we decided we wanted to know a little more about who the dog was and its history.

The day was sunny and warm when we made the congested drive on the 91, then halfway up a hill on an unpaved road out to Thinschmidt Kennels in Corona. They'd just gotten in a litter of German import puppies. It was almost too much cute to bear. In one kennel there were about 5 or 6 playing, all short-haired shepherds except for this one brutally cute fur ball off to the side. He was quieter and less rambunctious than the rest.

I knew the minute I saw him he was the one.

My wife was drawn more to his sister, one of the short-haired ones. But almost at the exact same time she was telling me this, the fur ball got up, came over, sat on my wife's feet and looked up at her.

It's a good thing stealing hearts is legal in Corona.

We used to joke that Max never read the German Shepherd manual. He had no idea how scary or mean he was supposed to be. Not to say he was a pushover, but he wasn't a high-strung shepherd that was tightly wound and always on alert. He was a sweet guy - unless you were the postman, a stranger coming up our walkway or someone he didn't like when my daughter was walking him.

I used to tell Max to sit. Then I'd put a chicken treat halfway in my mouth, lean over, and he'd bare his teeth, get right up to my face and gently take it from me. When I did this in front of some people, it scared the hell out of them. All I heard was how they'd never let a dog like Max get that close to their face. And sure, I suppose the fear with some German Shepherds would be getting your face ripped off. But the thought never crossed my mind. Or his. That's not who he was.

He especially loved to roughhouse in the backyard with my wife, because she was the one who'd really get into it with him. She gave as good as she got, and she was proud of the souvenir bruises up and down her arms that came from their play. When she'd hold his ball before she threw it, he'd jump up and grab her arm with his teeth to try and get it. He'd never bite down, he'd just hold her arm in his mouth like a Golden Retriever.

Maybe it's not so much he didn't read the manual as he read the wrong one.

Max's fighting weight was between 85-92 lbs. He wasn't a small dog, but because we saw him every day we never thought of him as large - he was just our dog. However every once in awhile, when someone approaching us would suddenly give him a terrified look then cross the street to pass us, or the pizza delivery guy jumped back five feet off my front porch when he saw me holding Max at the door, we'd remember he wasn't exactly a chihuahua.

Because he was a long-haired GSD and a lot of people had never seen one before, they loved to tell us he was a mixed breed and not a pure bred. This was despite the fact we'd seen pictures of his parents in Germany, knew his bloodline going back five generations and had papers on him. Oh yeah, and he was our dog. We always got a kick out of it.

Max had a lot of nicknames, but my favorite was the one my wife gave him: The Gunslinger. It was because in the middle of the night, he'd decide to come into our bedroom and sleep on the big pillow we had for him on the floor in there. He'd slam our bedroom door open like saloon doors in the old west, then he'd come and crash down on his pillow.

It only gave us heart attacks for the first five or six years.

When we got Max, the breeder stressed how important it was to socialize German Shepherds, even more so than most breeds. He was a large dog, and he had to be comfortable around people. So it seemed to me a few bring-a-dog-to-work days was a good place to start.

Almost everyone who came in contact with Max loved him for how beautiful he was inside and out. I worked at Y&R when I started socializing Max, and I brought him in a few times to get him used to strangers (and believe me, nobody's stranger than people who work in ad agencies - BAM!). After people met him, they weren't strangers very long.

Kurt Brushwyler, Ben Peters, Johanna Joseph Peters, Debbie Lavdas, Imke Daniel, Cameron Young, Amy Cook, Zac Ryder, Leroy Tellez, Janice MacLeod and Cecilia Gorman, thank you for loving on Max so much in those early days. He hadn't been exposed to a lot of people at that point, and your kindness, caring and demonstration of love towards him gave him a sense of confidence and security, and taught him from the beginning people weren't something to be afraid of.

I don't know if you all remember doing that. I'll never forget it.

Here's another thing: even though Max was the dog-liest of dogs, he was cat like in that it often seemed he had nine lives.

Years ago he had what turned out to be a bacterial infection that caused him to stumble and fall, off balance and confused. At first we were told it was likely a brain tumor. Fortunately, our close friend David Feldman is one of the premier diagnostic veterinarians in the country. We told him Max's symptoms, sent him the tests, and he prescribed antibiotics. It cleared up in a few days.

About three years ago, my wife noticed Max was being lethargic and not his usual self. Her Jedi instincts jumped into action, and she rushed him to the vet where they discovered a giant mass on his spleen which could rupture and kill him at any minute. Again, we turned to David, who arranged for us to bring Max to his practice where there was a surgeon and team standing by at midnight on a Saturday night. At two o'clock in the morning, we got a call Max had come through his spleen-ectomy just swimmingly.

It was not lost on us how close we came to losing him, and we've always considered every day since then gravy.

There was also the time he had his ass kicked by the neighbor's cat, and almost got his eyes clawed out. I'm certain he wouldn't want you to know about that.

In the past few days, he'd been lethargic in the extreme. Not getting up to walk, eat or pee. We took him to the vet, who saw right away he was critically anemic. After some x-rays, he discovered a large mass in the cavity where his spleen had been. It was crushing his intestines, and he was bleeding internally either from it or through it from his liver or kidneys.

There were options, including surgery. But because his red cell count was so low, he never would've survived it. We could've transfused him, but because he was bleeding internally, it would've been like a leaky bucket, going in his vein, bleeding out inside and not doing any good at all along the way. None of the options were promising or guaranteed - except to cause him pain, vastly reduce his quality of life and confuse and scare the hell out of him. He was 11 years old. We weren't going to put him through it.

It's almost always a lose-lose situation when your brain has to win out over your heart.

Since my parents never owned a house, we lived in apartments my whole life. In fact the house I'm in now is the first one I've ever lived in. I could never have dogs growing up. Max was my first. Thanks to him, I know I'll never be without a German Shepherd.

Max also had a very special trick. We didn't train him to do it, he just did it. His trick was making each one of us feel as if he loved us the most (although if I had to place money on it, I'd bet on my daughter). Max will always be the dog of our lives.

So we move on, grateful for having had him as long as we did, and finding peace knowing he's running free in greener pastures. As real dog lovers like to say, he's crossed over the Rainbow Bridge, and he'll be waiting.

It's a crazy world, and the older I get the less sure I am of anything. But there are two things I can say with absolute certainty: Max was well loved every single minute of his beautiful life.

And so were we.