Coco has idiopathic canine vestibular syndrome.
It came on suddenly. This morning. When I woke up, I noticed she couldn’t keep her balance like normal. She would stumble, and when she tried to shake her body and head, she’d fall over. She biffed it on the stairs. And then she was still wobbly when we made it outside to pee.
I told Liz. Woke her up. And we spent the rest of the morning calling animal hospitals to see who could take her as an emergency patient. Found a place over in Woodland Hills, and they were able to see her within a couple hours, which was a miracle, pretty much.
Initial diagnosis was vestibular syndrome, and the rest of their standard tests didn’t show anything else going on in her body. We picked her up, and she was much, much worse than she had been with me in the morning. She could hardly stand when we first got her. That was the scariest moment for me, for sure. She was better when she got home. She could navigate around on her own, she was very hungry, and she was ready to do normal routine stuff, albeit with a drunken swagger, some circling when the vertigo got really bad, and a constant wobble in her head and eyes.
Vestibular Syndrome, apparently, is the inflammation of the nerve that runs from the inner ear to our brain. It regulates our balance (among other things, I’m sure). When it gets inflamed, which it can from any number of things, even really bad allergies, apparently, we can’t stand up straight. Everything swims. We get really dizzy. That’s what Coco is feeling right now. Poor baby. But, her appetite has never wavered, and as long as we’re there to hold her and catch her when she falls, she’s able to do everything she normally does.
Apparently, there’s an excellent chance she’ll make a full recovery from the episode. That whatever is causing the inflammation isn’t serious, it will pass, and she’ll be back to normal. Might even be in a few days. On the flip side, it’s also possible this is being caused by something more serious.
Right now, to me it seems like there’s a good chance she’ll be fine. She’s otherwise totally normal. GI tract is normal. Appetite is normal. What she wants to be up and doing (mostly patrolling the kitchen for crumbs, licking my face, etc.) is normal. She’s still Coco. She hasn’t dissociated or otherwise lost her personality. That makes me feel like she’s going to be okay.
We’ll see how it goes tonight. She’s exhausted. I think she’ll sleep through. And then we’ll see how she is in the morning. My hope is that, at the very least, her eye movements will have calmed down.
Night night. Think positive thoughts. I love this dog so, so much, and this happened so fast. It was really, really hard to see her struggling so much today. I wasn’t ready for it. I expected her to be like she was in the morning, not so much worse. I’m glad she’s doing a bit better now.