Distal Denervating Disease.

Wizz the agility dog was so active on his last outing that owner Janet Jessop could barely keep up with him.
Little did she know that, in just a few days' time, the three-year-old Border Collie would be completely paralyzed.

Janet Jives with Wizz, her son Ben, Cocker Spaniel Basil and Springer Spaniel Darwin in Kingskerswell, Devon. She noticed one day that Wizz's bark was a little hoarse. Then he went out into the garden and slipped over; she was even more alarmed when he didn't try to get back up.

 "I had to pick him up, but then he kept on slipping. I couldn't understand what was going on," she said.

It was Sunday afternoon when this happened, so Janet decided to keep Wizz warm and take him to the vet the next morning. She even took him up to her bedroom that night so she could keep an eye on him.Janet continued: "He woke me up in the night making the most awful noise. I went over to him and his eyes just looked up at me but he couldn't move - he was completely paralyzed,"

Mystery illness.
Wizz was rushed to the local vet who quickly referred him to Exeter St David's Veterinary Hospital. He was given spinal X-rays and dye was injected into him to look for orthopedic problems, but nobody could understand what was wrong.

 "I was told that, after 48 hours, I would need to think about what we were going to do with him. If there was no improvement and they still didn't know what was wrong, I would have to decide whether to have him put down."

Janet was in a terrible state wondering what to do for her beloved dog when, on the third day, she got another call from the hospital vet, Peter Attenburrow: "He told me they thought it was something called distal denervating disease- and that there was a chance of saving Wizz”.

Distal denervating disease is a nerve-related condition, characterized by progressive limb weakness, paralysis and loss of limb tone. Although dogs may have to be put to sleep due to the severity of the symptoms, they can go on to make a spontaneous recovery.

The disease seems to be unknown outside Britain, and the cause is also a mystery. However, vets believe it may be related to Coonhound paralysis, seen in dogs in North America who have been bitten by raccoons.

Wizz stayed at the hospital for ten days and was a pitiful sight. "I went to visit him and he was just lying there, looking at me, unable to blink. It was his eyes that really got to me; you could see that he was still very much alive, but trapped inside a body he couldn't move. And his breathing was frightening - he was breathing from his abdomen, very fast, at about 70-80 breaths per minute."

Intensive nursing.
Vets decided that the best thing for Wizz would be for him to go home. As a nurse at nearby Torbay Hospital, Janet was well used to the rigors of nursing - but nothing prepared her for the long and exhausting hours to come.

"When we went to pick him up he had a high temperature and fluid on his lungs, so things didn't look good. Then, when we finally got him home, he we this bed constantly for a few days and I had to turn him every two hours to keep his joints moving, and prevent pressure sores and aspiration pneumonia," said Janet.

 Janet found it tough going getting up through the night to turn Wizz and then going out to work during the day, but she wouldn't give up on him. She also had to feed him every few hours by physically lifting his head by the scruff of his neck, and placing food into his mouth so that he could swallow it.

Recovery begins .
Will started to have physiotherapy to prepare his joints for the time when they would, hopefully, move again and to try to counteract any tendency for brittle bones caused by lying still for so long. A veterinary acupuncturist also came to help.

Then, on Christmas Day, nearly seven weeks after he first collapsed, Wizz lifted his head slightly: "It was fantastic - we knew it was the beginning of his recovery," said Janet.

Shortly afterwards, Wizz lifted the tip of his tail and wagged it: and Janet felt it was time to start getting him to move.

Wizz was booked into a specialist canine hydrotherapy pool to begin the long process of retraining his muscles. There was some concern that he may have broken his limbs during his initial falls in the garden seven weeks earlier, but these proved unfounded. However, he had lost a third of his body weight and was incredibly weak.

To help Wizz practice standing, Janet and her son fashioned slings out of blankets and would lift him into position between them, or beg visitors to help.

"We had to do it regularly. It's all to do with placement of their feet," said Janet. "When you stand them up at first their legs are all over the place."Then, after a few more days, Wizz pulled himself up onto his front legs. "I was taking the other dogs out for a walk and he was beside himself - he wanted to come too. He pulled himself up with his knees bent and came crawling out to us. It sounds terrible, but actually it was great to see, because he was moving at last," said Janet.

Looking to the future.
Several months later and Wizz is well on the mend. He is still building up his muscle tone and is just 2kg off his original weight of 22kg. He still gets very tired and it will be a few more months before he can begin the agility competitions that he loved, but it all looks achievable now, which was far from the case during those dark seven weeks in winter.

Distal denervating disease not only affected Wizz badly and caused Janet, her friends and family many hours of heartache, it also affected her bank balance. Wizz was not insured and the total bill for vets' fees and other therapies came to £1,800.

"Now that Wizz has recovered, my biggest concern is for other dogs who might be suffering from this disease," said Janet. "It obviously isn't an easy illness to diagnose and we were close to having Wizz put down, yet dogs can recover from it, given the right support."

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