Leon the Leonburger

Leon the Leonberger - now 8 yrs of age and very much a key member of the family. Having read about Leonbergers and their wonderful temperament and gentle nature, we deemed it would be a good choice after our Golden Retriever died. In fact, he is like a soppy giant retriever except retrieving does not figure in his vocabulary. Weighing around 150 -165 lbs, depending on the time of year, he is a gentle giant. In all the years together I have never even seen him growl at anyone and he certainly has had enough provocation, especially with children who regard him as a big cuddly teddy bear.

Leonbergers are incredibly intelligent and totally faithful but they just forget at times they are supposed to be dogs. They regard themselves as much of the family as anyone else and want to be part of everything. They are very tactile by nature and always want to be close to you. If you are watching TV, you can expect them place a paw on your foot or give you a paw to hold just so they can keep in contact.

Despite their size they do not need huge amounts of exercise but they do like a LARGE garden as they prowl around frequently. They moult twice a year and generate vast amounts of soft downy fur – no carpet is sacred, everything is covered and frequent brushing (outdoors!) at these times is a must.

They are totally loyal and loving and it is said that once you have had a Leonberger you will never get another breed – from my experience, I totally agree !

Amber’s Story – Laryngeal Paralysis

This contribution is in memory of Amber, a 3 year old Golden Retriever, who suffered from Laryngeal Paralysis, but sadly lost her fight in January 2005. Hopefully by raising awareness of what Amber and her owners dealt with, it may help other owners be aware and to identify similar problems in their own pups. In that way Amber will possibly help another pup to have a better life.

“It is now a week since I lost my beloved Amber to AP (Aspirational Pneumonia). I said that I would write a little about her when I felt that I could manage it.

On 19th November 2001 I collected this little bundle of fur and fun from the breeder not having any idea of just what we were in for with her health. She was an intelligent, adorable and funny Golden Retriever with a huge personality. I would throw a toy and this little pup would wiggle her butt as she walked across the kitchen to retrieve it and wiggle and wag her tail nearly falling over in the process to return the toy to me. She seemed to be toilet trained as soon as she arrived and not once while she was a pup did I get any puddles etc inside my house. I have no idea how this came about, as she had been in an outside kennel for the last 2 weeks prior to my collecting her and so the whole litter just wet and pooped wherever the feeling took them.

The first problem she developed was an ear infection, which took a long time to clear and within a few days of her 1st puppy vaccinations her problems really started. I had noticed her doing an odd swallowing thing and even contacted the breeder who told me that both her mother and sister did the same and that if she ate some grass she would throw up and that it would stop.

A couple of days after this began, she went outside and started running around my garden like a headless chicken making an almighty noise trying to breathe and it frightened me half to death. We took her to an emergency vet who thought that she had maybe tried to swallow something that had scratched her throat and put her on antibiotics in case of any infection, everything seemed to clear up and we thought that was the end of it. However every time we put a collar and lead on her she would act as though we were trying to strangle her and would wheeze and struggle for breath. By this time it was January 2002 and she was attending puppy-training classes and the trainer thought that something was not right and advised seeing the vet about it.

Amber had also started to become exercise intolerant and even a 15-minute slow walk would mean 2-3 hours of heavy panting afterwards. The trouble was, every time I took her to the vet, she was fine, until one day in May 2002 after a long walk off lead, she was wheezy and made the most awful noisy trying to get her breath that I took her straight to the vet's there and then.

Gerard (the vet) admitted her immediately saying that her breathing was definitely not normal. He x-rayed her and kept her in overnight under observation and when I collected her the next day, he said he had found a few things that were not quite as they should be. The main thing he seemed worried about was that her heart seemed enlarged and maybe this was what was making her exercise intolerant and breathless, he had arranged for me to see a heart specialist the following week. The x-ray also showed she had a very narrow airway and had a chest infection she was put on antibiotics for this.

The breeder came with me for the heart specialist appointment and we left Amber with him all day. When we collected her he said that her heart was fine but that he had found something that could be quite serious and told me that he had never seen this condition in any dog under the age of 4yrs, Amber was only 7 months old at this time. He then went on to explain that both her laryngeal flaps were completely paralysed and that in his opinion she needed to have a unilateral tieback as soon as possible. He also told us we should see a neurologist for further tests, as he had a suspicion that she had other neurological things going on too.

My own vet pulled some strings to get us seen at The Animal Health Trust within a week. Here they did extensive examinations of her and decided they needed to do both muscle and nerve biopsies and blood tests to try to find out exactly what was going on. They said that whatever it was seemed to be affecting her back legs already. The biopsies and bloods were to be sent to the USA for analysis and would take 3 weeks to come back.The next week at the end of May 2002, Amber had her tieback and as we had a holiday booked 10 days later, the vet boarded her at the vet practice for the week we were away. The results of all the tests came back that week, and both The Animal Health Trust and my vet Gerard phoned us in Corfu (Greece) to tell us the results. They had found something they hadn't expected to and that was she had Toxoplasmosis (a parasite) which was multiplying in her back leg muscles and due to her immune system actually trying to kill off the parasite it was also killing off her leg muscles. Toxoplasmosis normally sits as a cyst in a dog, does no harm and does not multiply. When Gerard had done her tieback he had also done biopsies on her throat nerves and muscles and the results of these came back a week later and they showed exactly the same was happening to her neck. She was treated for 8 weeks with 2 very strong antibiotics to kill off the Toxoplasmosis parasite.

Meanwhile she started to get very lethargic and had come into season for the first time. Everything then started to get a bit out of hand, she wouldn't play at all, slept a lot, got so nervous at the least little thing and would quiver to the extent she would wet herself and her very heavy season went on for 36 days without a break. I read an article in July 2002 on dogs with autoimmune diseases that referred to a seminar in Coventry where Dr Jean Dodds (from the USA) had done a talk on Hypothyroidism. I decided to write off for the seminar notes and also wrote a letter about Amber's medical problems. The lady at CIMDA who had organised the seminar wrote back with the notes and also a letter saying that in her opinion Amber had either Myasthenia Gravis or Hypothyroidism. I managed to mark off every single one of Amber's symptoms under the Hypothyroidism list and took this to my vet who contacted the lady at CIMDA. She asked my vet to do blood tests for thyroid function that are not normally done in UK and to send them off to the USA for analysis, and meanwhile to put Amber on Soloxine for her thyroid. Well, within 1½ days the season stopped completely, she started to take interest in her toys and stopped sleeping so much, she also stopped getting nervous, infact I wrote a list on an A4 sheet of paper of all her improvements. When the blood results came back it showed that Amber had enough TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone), was producing enough thyroxin (thyroid hormone) but they also showed there was virtually no free T3 or free T4 floating around her body, but she also didn't have thyroid antibodies to show that the hormone was being killed off my her immune system, so it drew a complete blank as to what was killing it off. She remained on Soloxine daily from then on.

3 months after her tieback in August 2002 she developed Aspirational Pneumonia (AP) but unfortunately we saw a junior vet who kept insisting that her chest was fine and it was her throat that was inflamed (I did not know about the LP group then and also didn't know that AP cannot always be heard through a stethoscope), he gave her steroid shots over 2 appointments. Needless to say these didn't help, she started coughing up so much white frothy liquid and having swallowing bouts worse than ever. In the end I decided to do a video recording of her and took it to the vets and insisted that I see a different person (Gerard was unfortunately on holiday at this time). I asked Pauline (the vet) to look at the video recording before she examined Amber. After she watched it, I said I thought Amber had AP and this vet agreed and x-rayed her and confirmed that it was indeed AP. Amber had to have 8 weeks of antibiotics to clear this.

We then decided in November 2002 to have her spayed, as I wasn't going to be able to breed from her, which had been the reason that I had chosen a bitch rather than a dog. Things then seemed to calm down quite a lot and we virtually had a normal life apart from the repeated swallowing bouts until June 2003 when I noticed that her eye balls were bulging so much that the whites had started to blister, so once again back to the vet. Amber was referred to an eye specialist and they decided that it was all part of her ongoing condition and that it was affecting her eye muscles now, the bulging lasted about a week and the eyes then returned to normal with no treatment.

All went well until late December 2003 when she developed a chest infection which took a bit of shifting, so Gerard my vet decided to x-ray her to rule out AP again and that is when he discovered that she had a partial collapse of the flap on the opposite side to her tieback. He decided to manage this as long as possible with medication and put her on Corvental D (Theophylline). She could only take this once a day as she turned into a complete maniac on a twice-daily dose.

She managed quite well until June 2004 when once again the eyes started to bulge and seeing as it was the same time of year as the last time, I queried if it could be hayfever and they said they now thought that it just might be that. She was given steroid eye drops and again a week later it all went down.

In September 2004 she developed a really bad ear infection that required antibiotics and steroid drops to clear it up which took 4 weeks. We also noticed at this time that she had begun to get a runny nose and around her lower lip where her top canine teeth sat when her mouth was shut, she was continually wet, as though she wasn’t swallowing her saliva properly, this area eventually became so soggy it started to bleed and crust, we were given steroid cream for that, which helped a bit but it still bled slightly. She had started again to show signs of exercise intolerance and the swallowing bouts were happening more often, so we cut down on the amount of exercise she had. This didn't seem to make any difference and once again she started to sleep a lot.

She developed another chest infection at the end of November 2004 and had to have 3 weeks worth of antibiotics to clear it and again AP was suspected. Gerard x-rayed her on December 30th 2004 to check it had cleared up and her chest and lungs were fine but she had very enlarged and inflamed tonsils and the partial collapse had now gone completely across and this was now sitting right against the tied back side and was completely floppy. It was decided to remove the tonsils on Jan 5th 2005 to see if this helped. She developed an infection 3 days later and once again coughed up frothy liquid but when I took her to see Ian, yet another vet in the practice (there are 6 of them altogether) he said that she probably had a slight infection from dead tissue left from having the tonsils out and put her on an antibiotic similar to Clavamox. Having her tonsils out unfortunately made no difference to her breathing and we were stuck as to what should be done to help her. She started to sleep almost all the time and was continually panting all the time she was awake, so something had to be done and quickly, she also started to lose weight.

We considered a Tracheotomy but a specialist that Gerard contacted thought that this would be a problem with the swallowing bouts she had and they though these bouts were probably due to a condition called Cricopharyngeal Dysphragia, a genetic condition prevalent in Golden Retrievers. This condition can only be diagnosed using a “fluoroscope”, which is a piece of diagnostic equipment not readily available in the UK. However, there is one at “Martin Referral Services” a specialist in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. 2 weeks to the day she went back in for surgery to have a partial tieback on the collapsed side, to try to pull it back to where it had been after her initial tieback in 2002. They were not cutting the bottom of the flap as with a normal tieback but just pulling it across and securing it. This again was done through the neck. She was supposed to come home that day but Gerard decided as she was calm, to just keep her in overnight as a precaution.

I phoned the next day to see when I could collect her, to be told she had a "rattly" chest and that she could not come home that day (the vet that spoke to me was unfortunately the same one who had missed the AP the first time around). I decided to go visit her and was horrified when I heard her breathing and said I thought it was AP, I was assured this noise was in her throat and not her chest, she was also refusing to eat or drink so they had her on IV fluids. She was very lethargic again and just not herself. She was already on antibiotics again (Clavamox) that Gerard had put her on straight after this 2nd tieback but unfortunately for us he was on a day off when this rattly chest started.

When he came in the next day he was absolutely horrified at what he found and x-rayed her immediately and also did a scope to see what was going on, as she seemed unable to swallow and was inhaling her own saliva. He found that the surgery area was fine with no swelling at all but the x-rays showed she had severe AP and he introduced Baytril as well as giving the Clavamox, but she just deteriorated as the day went on. We went to see her 3 times that day and each time she was getting worse but still wagging her tail when we went in.

Half way through that night they had to start her on oxygen as she was really heaving to get her breath and they had contacted an intensive care unit, which we transferred her to in the early afternoon on Saturday, still giving her continual oxygen. The specialist here was horrified when he saw her and said she was much worse than he expected and immediately did more x-rays. These unfortunately showed that her lungs were so much worse than the day before and that they had started to collapse, we were told it was going to be practically impossible to get her better and even if by a very small chance they did manage it, so much damage would have been done to her lungs that she would probably get AP again within a few weeks.

We then had to make the harrowing decision to put her to sleep to end her suffering and pain, it was one of the hardest things we have ever had to do. When we went back into the room to be with her while they did that final injection, she still tried to wag her tail when she saw us. She went very peacefully and quietly, she was really ready to go.

My biggest regret in all this is that I didn't insist on an x-ray when she developed the infection 3 days post tonsillectomy, as we all (vets as well) think she had actually started with the AP then and that the Clavamox was enough to stop it getting any worse but not to clear it and having more surgery on top of that was just to much for her to cope with despite the fact she was a fighter.

Although this story makes it seem as though Amber was continually ill and that she suffered all the time, she actually had some really good times in between these incidents and had a great love of life and we had decided right in the beginning that as long as she kept fighting it all, so would we, unfortunately in the end she just hadn't the energy to fight any more. She has left a great big hole in our hearts and this will take a very long time to come to terms with.”

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LP/ - Support group at Yahoo! that may be useful

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