From trauma and terror good things, even remarkable things, sometimes come.
Our older dog, Flynn, has epilepsy, as has been chronicled (way too often, critics would say) in this newspaper. It’s heartbreaking to see him frothing, banging and writhing on the ground, semi-conscious, for what seems like endless minutes. The aftermath of the seizures is in some ways worse, as Flynn staggers, nearly blind and essentially deaf, for seemingly endless minutes again before he collapses into a heap.
Then the whole thing repeats itself, again and again and again.
Flynn had several good months before a recent bad spell. But what I have come to realize is this continuing ordeal has made us into better people and a closer family. And in the case of one family member, we may have found a special gift as a result of this continuing ordeal.
The fact that Flynn, an Australian shepherd, is so smart and so particular has made his illness that much harder for us. He’s a character, but he’s our character, so we hate to see him battered and beaten down by seizure clusters.
But we’ve come together as a family even more to care for him, to medicate him, to protect him when he is seizing, to watch out for him when more seizures are in the offing, to baby him while he recovers. I think this ordeal has made us all more patient, more compassionate people.
People often say when someone is suffering from life-threatening illness that the sufferer is brave, or a fighter. I don’t think Flynn really thinks about bravely fighting through his illness. I don’t think he really realizes what’s going on. I’ve tried to explain it to him, with little luck. He’s brilliant, but not that brilliant.
What I have come to admire about Flynn, though, is that he’s tough. He gets knocked down by seizure after seizure, his body drained, his head and face battered by the ferocity of the fits, yet he rises time and time again, often before he should. He wants his life back, and soon, so he gets up, bloodied, battered but unbowed.
And, within hours or days, he usually is doing OK again.
That’s a good story, I think. An even better one involves our other dog, Bobby.
We bought Bobby, a Maltipoo, to be a purse dog for my wife. Bobby was supposed to be 7 pounds. He turned out to be 14 pounds, too big for even Marcus Bachmann’s purse. He also grew up to be a cocky little tough who would rather play fight than be anyone’s lapdog. Yes, he has his lapdog moments, but only at his choosing.
When Bobby first witnessed Flynn’s seizures, he was terrified. This was his daddy, his idol, the little chicken to Flynn’s Foghorn Leghorn, and he couldn’t fathom what was happening to his mentor.
After seeing many episodes he started trying to help us help Flynn through the seizures. He was our little holistic medical assistant, trying to lure Flynn back from wherever his mind and body went via licks and nuzzles.
Then, during Flynn’s most recent cluster of seizures, Bobby alerted to Flynn twice and drew my attention to Flynn as he was about to start a seizure. I was able to intervene before Flynn went totally into the grand mal seizures, saving all of us from more horror.
I’d heard some “seizure-alert” dogs are able to warn humans about epileptic seizures before they happen, but I’d never heard of a dog alerting to another dog’s imminent seizures. But little Bobby, the purse dog who couldn’t and wouldn’t, apparently has become a seizure-alert dog for his best canine buddy.
Yes, life’s beauties do sometimes come from the ugliest places.
Bret Kofford teaches writing at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus. He can be reached at Kofford@roadrunner.com
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