My biggest concern, once getting Shasta home, was meeting my big dog Isis, who had proven to be aggressive toward other dogs.
Of course, I knew she would be fine with Shasta once she accepted her as part of the family. It was just the first meeting I was concerned about. Sure enough, after Shasta grabbed the fluffy tail of Shih Tzu Winston, sending him slinking off in dismay, she turned her attention to Isis, my 55-lb German Wirehaired Pointer/Lab/whatever. Isis immediately snapped at Shasta and sent her running away crying. But Shasta wasn't deterred for long. I held Isis by the collar and made positive noises about the new puppy, and Shasta came back and was biting at the hair on Isis's legs, and Isis decided to tolerate it.
I don't know the moment it happened. But somewhere in those first few minutes, Shasta decided that Isis was the greatest thing that had ever stepped foot on the face of the Earth. Isis was Everything. All That Is. While I couldn't tell that Isis had any interest in her tag-along, Shasta would go wherever Isis went, and do whatever Isis did. Isis would run along the bushes at the back fence, and Shasta would run behind her, baying delightfully. Isis would dig at a whole in the ground, and Shasta would excitedly try to dig next to her. I once had a photo of them sitting in the backyard, where Isis had her head turned, looking off to one side. Shasta also had her head turned to the exact degree, looking at whatever Isis was looking at. I emailed it to Sandy, and she said it was so adorable it made her cry. Those first weeks, Shasta was too little to push the hard plastic of the doggy door open, so she would wait until Isis went running out, and then she would run underneath Isis's stomach to go out the doggy door at the same time.
As for me, Shasta had little interest, except that I provided the food, which was of extreme importance to her. (I had always let my dogs eat free choice. I had one bowl that always had food in it, and they each ate when they felt like it and none ever got fat. That went out the window when I brought Shasta home. She not only wanted to eat all the time, but she thought she should be allowed to have everyone else's food, too.) To me, Shasta seemed to have a personality like a cat. She would tolerate certain things, if it was in her best interest, but otherwise she only cared about Isis and had little use for me or the other two dogs.
After a few months, I lost my old poodle, and the following spring we all moved from Denver to a newly built house in Castle Rock, 25 miles south. The area was up on a mesa and still had lots of open space. So, I took Isis and the now grown Shasta on many early morning walks in the open pasture and rocky hills. Once, we came to an area with a narrow, deep ditch full of water. Isis had enjoyed swimming in it before -- as much as the 25' leash would allow -- and this time she dived right in. Of course, Shasta went in after her. I was alarmed when I saw Shasta's head go under the water. I reached down to grab her and pulled her head up. She had her paws on the bank, and her expression was like "Uh oh." I had to struggle to pull her all the way out. Thankfully, that brush with drowning discouraged her from following Isis into water. At a lake around our neighborhood, I'd let Isis off the leash to go swimming, and Shasta would run around the bank of the lake, excitedly baying, as though to say, "Go, Isis! Go, go, go!"
I only saw Isis and Shasta get into a squabble once. It was over a treat, and they went at each other for about three seconds. Then they both suddenly stopped, looked at each other, and then started frantically licking each other in the mouth, as though to say, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!"
Though Shasta seemed annoyed when I'd try to do training with her, I didn't have to try very hard to teach her to sit or stay. I'd just have Isis do those things, with Shasta beside her, and then Shasta would look at Isis, like, "What are we doing? We're sitting still?" And so she'd do it, too.
At 3 AM one morning, I was awakened by the bed shaking and odd noises. I turned on the light and Shasta was lying stretched out, her limbs stiff, her whole body shaking, foam coming out of her mouth, and yet still seemed asleep. She came to consciousness a few moments later, but seemed dazed. I got dressed and took her to the emergency vet clinic, five miles away. I rapidly explained what had happened to the tech -- "like some sort of seizure" -- and she asked, "How old is she?" "Three," I replied. The tech nodded and casually said, "That's usually when it starts. We'll keep her for 24 hours and see if it happens again."
She didn't have another seizure that night, but Shasta would continue to have seizures about every 3-4 weeks, sometimes as many as three in a day. I'd never heard of epilepsy in dogs before; now, I was finding out that almost every person I mentioned it to had had a seizure dog at some point in their lives. Some breeds were particularly prone, and beagles were one of those breeds. I was a person who was blessed with good health and never been on medication, and had always had healthy animals, and now I was learning about all sorts of medications and dosages, and going to the pharmacy became a regular part of life.
Sometimes, other dogs will attack a dog that is having a seizure. Instead, while my dogs were at first perplexed by Shasta's strange condition, Isis became protective. Shasta would be dazed and blind for at least an hour after a seizure, and Isis would curve her body around Shasta, to try to keep her from bumping into walls. Sometimes, when Shasta was lying on the sofa, she would stretch her legs into the air, and my heart would skip a beat, until I was sure she was just stretching and not having a seizure. Once when Shasta stretched out her legs, Isis leapt from the opposite sofa and went over to Shasta, sniffing at her, as though to ask, "Are you having a seizure?" Once assured that Shasta wasn't, she went back to her chair.
The medications caused Shasta to change personality, and stumble around like a drunk, until she adapted. Once the most common treatments didn't work, others were tried, and sometimes Shasta would go as long as two months before having another seizure, but those gaps were always short lived. I eventually took her to a specialist, which cost $140 to just walk in the door, and his recommendations didn't help in the long-term, either. Worse, the economy was crashing and I was in a tough financial situation. All the vet visits were becoming a problem, as every time a dosage was tweaked, Shasta had to be brought in for a blood test, which was $100.
Finally, the specialist said that the only thing left to do was a brain scan, which would cost $2000, to eliminate a brain tumor as a cause. That wasn't going to happen, and if Shasta did have a brain tumor, it's not like anything could be done about it.
Shasta solved the problem when she was five. At one visit to the specialist, he noticed that she had some swelling in her jaws. He prescribed an antibiotic, as he thought she might have a developing infection in her jaws. A few days later, Shasta was very lethargic and I took her to the emergency clinic one night. They (ironically) had their attention on a dog that was seizing constantly, and dismissed me with, "Of course, Shasta is lethargic. She feels bad because she has an infection. Keep her on the antibiotic." Two days later, Shasta wouldn't eat and seemed thoroughly disinterested in everything. I took her into the clinic and they were alarmed at her total lack of bodily functions. They did a imaging scan and found a big mass at her back, which was probably cancer. I didn't have to think very hard about putting her to sleep. The vet was so eager to see what was going on with her that he offered to do an autopsy for free, and I agreed.
I left the clinic with a feeling of relief. This roller coaster with Shasta was exhausting and horrendously expensive. And it's not like I felt particularly attached to her, since she was never very interested in me. I'd only had her five years -- so much for the "purebred puppy" thing. All my shelter dogs had lived at least twice that. I was most worried about Isis losing her buddy, but they'd had some moments together that morning, and surely Isis could tell that Shasta didn't have long, and in the way that animals are at peace about death, she never showed signs of mourning.
When the vet called later in the day, he said it hadn't been cancer at all. The mass was a pocket of pus at Shasta's back. The only time he'd seen something like that before was with a dog that was already dead when it was brought in. A grass seed ("the kind that stick to your socks") had worked its way beneath the dog's skin, and into its body, causing a massive infection. That was his best guess as to what had happened to Shasta, and since those grass seeds are all over my yard, it made sense to me.
It's been nine years since I lost Shasta, and because I had her such a short time, she's the first one I forget when I mentally review the dogs I've had. But I will always be grateful for her, for two reasons. The first is that I joined an international Yahoo group for owners of epileptic dogs. Turns out, one of the members, Lindsay, lived just 25 miles from me, and we went to lunch one day. She had a deaf Australian shepherd mix that had would have as many as seven seizures in one night, so Shasta's condition was mild in comparison. More importantly, Lindsay owned horses, and through her and another rider she introduced me to, I was able to go on some fabulous horseback rides the next seven or eight summers.
The second reason I'm grateful for Shasta is that I was able to bear witness to the incredible relationship between her and Isis. I've never seen anything like that, before or since.
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