Pixie
Survivor Nominee
Pixie
Our Pixie is 4 years old and she has always been the happiest girl. She was the runt of the litter but by far the biggest character and we couldn’t bear to part with her. She had tummy issues and skin problems when she was a couple of months old, but we managed to get on top of this with the help of our vet. Pixie has always been the most energetic dog you could meet, but at the end of last year, she suddenly went off her legs. We worried she’d broken her back as she had no function in either of her back legs but she was still wagging her tail, so ruling this out as a possibility and puzzling us even more. Amazingly, she still managed to get out of her bed using only her front legs. After some time, a visit to the vets and some antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, Pixie slowly gained the use of her back legs again and returned to her usual happy self. We thought this was a once-off infection that the antibiotics had caught and cured. However, we were very wrong and Pixie has 4 more episodes after this, each lasting a little longer and the gap in between getting a little shorter. She also lost a considerable amount of weight. The vets were baffled as they hadn’t seen anything like it before. They even contacted a neurologist who looked at videos we had taken of Pixie and they also hadn’t seen anything like it before. They had no explanation as to what was causing the problem. We discussed Pixie’s next options and, while we didn’t want her to suffer, we also weren’t ready to say our goodbyes, especially as, even while going through this she has still been such a happy dog always wagging her tail, eating as many treats as she could get and lapping up all the attention and extra cuddles. With advice from our vet, we decided to try a high dose steroid with the decision that if this didn’t help then we would consider saying goodbye to our girl. Thankfully the steroids seem to be working and Pixie has now gone 4 months without another episode. We are not weaning down the steroid dose in the hopes she never has to go through this ever again. We are still no closer to knowing what’s been happening but we consider ourselves so lucky to still have our happy little fighter. This is why we are nominating Pixie for a SuperDog Survivor Award.
Category: Survivor
