To start out, since you will see his name several times throughout these writings - Tsu’tey is pronounced Sue-Tay, I also call him TT some times. That being said, he was a wonderful little puppy, due to his mother not producing a lot of milk, I hand fed the litter for quite some time before they were weaned so they absolutely loved being handled and I developed very close relationships with them quickly because of it. Tsu’tey and his littermates did wonderful through everything, weaned great and were developing nicely. Then when they were around 5-6 weeks old, they started getting sick one by one. There were 6 in the litter, 4 of them got sick - the first started vomiting and went off food, we kept her hydrated with sub-q fluids and it all passed in about 12 hours. Then another 2 got sick, we did the same and one was back to normal in 24 hours, the other took about 48 hours. Then Tsu’tey got sick, the 4th to get sick (the other two never showed signs of being sick). He started vomiting, went off his food but he wasn’t getting better after 12-48 hours, he was only getting worse. I was giving sub-q fluids and syringing what food I could get into him, as well as some sugar. He was coping well but had absolutely no appetite, he eventually stopped vomiting and was having bowel movements very infrequently due to not eating, at first they were quite soft, then turned to diarrhea and then returned to normal, though he was still sick - no appetite and occasionally still throwing up. Then one morning he started seizing, I checked his eyes and the pupils were decreasing and increasing while the light never changed, I pumped him full of sugar and the seizure stopped quickly, though it was a strong one. So I kept giving him sugar and trying to keep food in him as often as I could get it in him. Through this whole ordeal, he NEVER left my side. I carried him wherever I went, no matter what I was doing - if I absolutely had to use both my hands, I left him laying on the couch, tucked in a blanket while one of my momma girls watched over him. He sat with me on the couch, he slept in bed with me so I could get up frequently and give him sub-q and force feed him. He was absolutely stuck to me. He continued to have very slight seizure activity over the next two days - feet and legs tightening up mostly and I would give him sugar immediately and the seizure activity would stop. After the seizure activity had stopped I discovered that the sub-q fluids I was giving him created a problem in one of his legs. It felt like a knot and when I started massaging it - fluid starting coming out and the flesh eventually started to sluff off. The vets put in an IV catheter and gave us antibiotics for the infection in his leg and after about 2 days he seemed perkier than usual, so when we fed his siblings we decided to put him down with them and he started to eat with them! Huge success and we couldn’t have been more happy, we were just ecstatic to see him eating food on his own after over a week of nothing but what I was syringing down him. After thinking about many different things, we finally discovered it was probably food poisoning due to expired wheat germ they had eaten. The vets think the same thing since he was the last one affected and it had more time to germinate in him, which made him worse. So after more than a week of force feeding him and him not drinking or eating anything on his own, we saw progress. After 3 days of the catheter being in, it was removed since he was eating and drinking on his own. He slowly returned to normal food (though I fed him much more frequently than the other puppies) and watched his water intake closely. His leg was healing nicely with help from Cut Heal. It was a very slow progress and it took him a while to put good weight on but we saw new weight on him every day, he was stunted compared to his siblings, about 2 weeks behind them since he never grew during the ordeal. He continued to sleep with me at night however, my little bed buddy and I knew when he was feeling much, much better when he started pulling my hair in the middle of the night and also in the morning to get me up! Needless to say, because of everything we had been through - he is stuck to me like glue, he could be loose in the house with all the other adults and they wouldn’t even touch him because they know he is MINE, plus they spent so much time laying next to him on the couch and the girls watched over him quite well - so they just knew he was one of the pack and not to mess with him at all. He was weak for several days so we worked on mobility, keeping him off any slippery surfaces and I only let him down to walk around for a very short periods of time so not to stress him and his joints to much, we slowly increased the amount of time he could walk around at one time.
After the catheter was placed
Eating kibble all by himself, you can see the scab where the infection was
And so the progress began, he slept with me in bed for several more weeks before he became such a monster that I couldn’t do it anymore, chewing on my hair, chewing on my nose, jumping off the bed and then crying to get back on the bed in the middle of the night. Plus all but one of his siblings had left and I didn’t want his sister to have to sleep all by herself at night. So he started sleeping with his sister in a crate at night and he did amazing with that, I thought he would be a wreck since he was so use to having human interaction all the time but he adapted to the crate beautifully. Everything was going great, slowly but surely he put weight on and looked excellent, other than being smaller than his sister that was still with us and the scar on his leg from the infection. He is a total goofball, not afraid of a thing and loves running through the kitchen, down the hall and back through the kitchen again. He also LOVES grabbing a hold of your pants at the ankle and being pulled around.
Napping on my bed, you can see the hole in his leg quickly healing over
Taking command of my pillow
Just looking cute, the stuff on his chest took forever to get off - it was the various sticky foods he was receiving and he would spit out on himself
Then when we was about 3 months old, mom got up one morning and got him and his sister out of the crate to take them out to potty and something was wrong, his head was completely tilted to the side and his balance was way off. He would stumble and wouldn’t straighten his head out, we rushed him into the vets and he was diagnosed with an inner ear infection… this poor guy never catches a break! So he was put on 3 different medications and I watched him carefully when he was outside or inside walking around so he wouldn’t fall down and hurt himself, he quickly got use to his new balance issues and after a few days he could walk around just fine, but if he shook his head he would fall down occasionally. After a few more days the head tilt got better, though it was still not straight.
The head tilt he still has from the inner ear infection - this was several days after having been on his medications.
Then we started to notice something, something that had probably been going on for a little while but it really got noticeable as he got older and more independent. We think he’s deaf. Now, I know when he was little he could hear, he responded to me talking to him and when he was three weeks old and I took a video of him and his siblings and it clearly shows him responding to noise. He is looking at me and when I squeak at him he twitches his ears, which is a normal thing for puppies to do when they hear something at that age. So now we try and think back about when it may have occurred. It could have possibly happened when he seized as seizures can cause deafness, it could have been when he got the inner ear infection, though he appears to be totally deaf and as far as we know, he only had an inner ear infection in one ear. We are having him BAER tested soon to learn the truth, but we are already pretty sure he’s totally deaf, he responds to no noises at all. I will like to have his ear drums looked at to see what they look like, but that will happen in the future. But for now he is still on the last of his antibiotics for the ear infection, still has a slight head tilt but otherwise he’s doing great. I am working on his attention to me right now before I work on any other kind of training and signs. He’s always ready to go, go, go and has the attention span of a gnat right now so working on getting him to pay attention to me is proving difficult at times. He responds to vibrations as I can get his attention by stomping my foot on the floor. It absolutely does not get him down in the very least though, he's as happy as any puppy possibly can be and we love him to pieces. He's so very laid back when being held that he literally melts in your arms, he just totally goes limp.
Proof of his 'limpness' Excuse my dirty clothes, I had just come in from playing with puppies that like to jump on you!
As we continue in the adventures of Tsu’tey, I will update as often as possible with how things are going and how his training is coming along, results from the BAER testing and what his ear drums look like when I get someone to take a peek at them. Right now the main focus in training is getting his attention and keeping his attention - once we have mastered that, we will work on every day commands such as come, go outside, crate, and because he barks quite often when he wants attention, I will work on a 'hush' command as well.
Stay tuned as our adventure continues!
