For a while now I have seen how BamBam slowly aged. He is 8 so it’s not really strange. But I still don’t like it. It hurts like hell. It is the negative side with having any pets. But I still keep my hope up, his grandma Shannon lived to 13. So in my mind BamBam has many years to come.

But I came home on Monday morning and saw that he had chewed off the hair on the left side on his butt. WTH? We’ve had a couple of fleas, that is no secret but I haven’t seen many after I treated both of them with Frontline. Other than that he was normal.
But on yesterday he was staggering when he was walking. It was quite obvious to me that something was not right even though I could not say what exactly was wrong. He wasn’t limping but something was not right in his front. I started making a theory about him itching his butt for a long time and maybe he had pulled a muscle in his shoulder or back? Well he is 8 and he doesn’t recover as fast as usual so I decided to call the vet this morning. That was confirmed later last night when we went to bed and he was going to move for Twix who wasn’t even that close or doing anything and he screamed in pain. This dog doesn’t say shit for anything! Now I knew he had pain somewhere.

So I called Wills Point Vet Clinic this morning at 8 am… I think it was a minute early but they picked up. Load him up and come down. We walked in the door 15 minutes later. Since we didn’t have an appointment we had to wait and as always BamBam lays down. But this time he absolutely refused to stand up when it was our turn to go into the room. I had Twix with me too that didn’t help the entire ordeal. The floor is slick for big dogs there but this was also fear and pain. Mostly fear. So I pushed/dragged him halfway to the room and then he stood up and walked into the room. And laid down again.

Dr. Rachel is wonderful. She listened to my weird statement of the last weeks of my aging dog and how he is now walking etc etc. Looked at BamBam and without hesitation said anti inflammatory, pain meds and muscle relaxers for a month. She completely took my words and agreed with me, he has pain somewhere, he is older and he needs help. Start doing x-ray is not reason to, let’s go this route and see what happens. It may be the beginning of Wobblers, something quite common in Great Danes but he doesn’t show all symptoms yet. So we medicate with these three now and see what happens.
Made me think, wish some doctors would listen to their patients as well as veterinarians listen to owners. Dr. Rachel had not even seen him walk, not even touched him (because she knows he doesn’t like it). I am so blessed to have a PCP, Dr. Rich, who listens to me and really helps me when I have an health issue. But the amount of ER doctors I have met… they have a lot to learn from veterinarians.

And then came the challenge with getting BamBam out of there. We had to take a towel to lift his back end and I lifted the front end until we came on non slick ground. Then he was perfectly fine walking. It was good that the nurse, Jennifer, got to see it too because except walking in to the clinic, he had not walked many steps. He had no problem jumping into the car… jumping and jumping may be exaggeration but we have our technique. But when we came home he leaped out of the car in a way he never done before! WOW!!! I could see how painful it was to him. So it was straight to give him some meds.

Hopefully this will help him. I bet it will take a couple of days before we see any improvement but already now I can tell that he is walking a little bit better. More relaxed… I am working two nights now so he will have some time to adjust to the meds too. To be honest, I think this is something I have to give him the rest of his life. Which I don’t mind as long as he is okay! Anything for my big boy!

Twix is doing just fine. This is the time of season when I buy a lot of watermelons 🍉 This dogs absolutely LOVES watermelons. It’s to the point I think if you had a steak and watermelon he would eat the watermelon first. He usually doesn’t beg but look at him yesterday when I was eating my plate…

Is he trying to hypnotize the watermelon to fly into his mouth on the first picture? Don’t worry, he gets a lot of it! I share with them. But just wanted to show some cute pictures of him!