Loving Luther

I can't believe that Tate's first birthday is just around the corner. He is cruising around all over the place, he will walk soon. He is around 22 lbs and must be going through some kind of growth spurt lately, he is a bottomless pit! He is averaging around 32 oz of milk and three solid meals plus a solid snack each day. I quit pumping three weeks ago, and we finished the last of my stored breast milk so now Tater is on formula and doesn't seem to notice a difference. I must say that it felt so good to put that pump away. Luther developed a cough a month or so ago, he would make a sort of hacking sound that scared Nina. Every time he would cough Nina would start crying, she has always been nervous and aware of loud noises, like my Dad's boisterous sneezes! Anyway, we assumed that it was just kennel cough or some kind of a cold and didn't think much about it because he seemed fine otherwise. The cough persisted for a couple of weeks so Sean took him to the vet as a precaution, we didn't really expect any big problem. The vet detected an abnormal heart rhythm and took a chest xray. The chest film revealed that Luther's left atrium is severely enlarged. She referred us to a specialist for an EKG and echocardiogram, which revealed that Luther has a severe case of "mitral valve dysplasia". The cough is due to fluid buildup in his lungs, basically he was showing the preliminary signs of congestive heart failure. The valve between the left atrium and ventricle is malformed, causing blood to reverse flow and therefore his heart to enlarge. The prognosis is not good. It is very rare for a dog of Luther's breed and age (4 1/2 years old) to have this condition. For the next day or so after we got the news we kept checking him every five minutes to make sure that he was still with us...The ironic thing is that had we not taken him in we never would have suspected that he was so sick. They have put him on a cocktail of meds that includes two diuretics, an ace inhibitor, and a sodium restricted diet. So that is the bad news. The good news is that he is doing really well. He seems to be adjusting to the meds and has great energy and appears to be comfortable and happy. He is such a special animal. He is content just to be with us, he gets much less attention than he used to due to the kids, and he just smiles and loves us unconditionally. We will keep him as happy and comfortable as we can for as long as we are blessed to have him, hopefully a good long time.