Of Mites And Mange

This is the story of how Bisou, Wolfie and I got mange.

It began in the golden month of September, when the skies were blue for days on end and the leaves were turning and the goldenrod and the ragweed were wafting pollen into the atmosphere in unprecedented amounts.  I noticed that Bisou was scratching quite a bit, and shedding red-gold hairs in unprecedented amounts.  Wolfie was scratching too, and shedding copiously--but then Wolfie's always shedding.

At about this time my doctor put me on Gabapentin for a back problem, and after a couple of days I noticed some red itchy spots on my skin.  "Hives!"  I said to myself.  "I must be allergic to Gabapentin."  And I stopped taking it.

Bisou's scratching was starting to drive us all crazy, so I took her to Vet #1.  "I've never seen so many itchy dogs as I have this fall," he said.  "Bisou is suffering from environmental allergies.  Here, give her some of this prednisone."

Although the prednisone made the itch go away, I worried about its effects of Bisou's innards.  But the minute I stopped the prednisone, the itch came back.  My dog savvy friends recommended over-the-counter benadryl, so I tried that.  It worked well, except that it caused Bisou to retain urine, a common side effect.  So I stopped the benadryl and the itch resumed.  Fortunately Wolfie, who by now was also itching a lot, was able to tolerate the benadryl.

Meanwhile, despite  stopping the Gabapentin, my red spots continued to multiply, but I was so focused on the dogs' problem that I didn't pay too much attention to my own relentless itching.  I was especially worried about Bisou, who was looking thin and raggedy, her once lovely coat reduced to tatters.
Then, one night, I saw that the edges of her left ear were completely hairless and, worst of all, the skin seemed to be flaking off.  At eight the next morning, Bisou and I were at the office of Vet #2.  "It's been an itchy season, all right," he said, "but I'll take a skin scraping just to make sure."  He came back from the lab with a triumphant grin.  "Good news!" he said, waving the slide in the air.  "Bisou's got mange!"

"It really is good news," he said, as I recoiled in horror.  "Mange is a lot easier to treat than allergies."  He recommended a complicated course of Ivermectin for both Bisou and Wolfie. ("If she has mange, he has mange," he said.)  When I asked how this disaster could have befallen my dogs, he explained that all it took was for Bisou to rub against a plant that a fox with mange had previously touched.  There is a big red fox that travels frequently through our neighborhood.  Could he, I wondered, be the culprit?

After giving the dogs their first dose of medication, I looked up sarcoptic mange online.  This is what I found.  Mange is caused by a mite, sarcoptes scabiei.  There are several varieties of sarcoptes mites, each with a preference for a different primary host, on which it reproduces.  Sarcoptes scabiei var. canis causes mange in dogs. We humans have our own mite,  sarcoptes scabiei var. hominis, which is contracted through human-to-human contact.
I scrolled through the websites and scratched my head.  Could it be that what I had was not hives, but mange?   The dog-mange mites, I learned, can crawl onto humans and bite.  However, they will not reproduce on human skin.  Thus, the sites stated, in humans the infestation is self-limiting--that is, the mites bite but eventually die.

Soon, thanks to the Ivermectin, the dogs stopped itching.  I spent my life vacuuming frantically and washing dog towels and bedding in hot water to prevent re-infestation.   And scratching.  It was odd that, as the dogs were getting better, I was getting so much worse.

"You should go to the doctor," my spouse--who, miraculously, was not itching--advised.  "There really is no need," I replied between scratches.  "In humans the condition is self-limiting.  I just have to wait for my mites to die a natural death."

Days passed.  I was covered in bites and scratching all night.  "If I go to the doctor, he'll just give me steroids," I told my husband as I raked my fingernails over the backs of  my knees.  "Remember, the condition is self-limiting in humans!"

Finally, after a month of itching, I acknowledged that, for some reason, my mange was not self-limiting.  I went to the health center, displayed my bite-speckled abdomen, and walked out five seconds later with two prescriptions for permethrin cream, one for myself and, just to make sure, one for my symptom-free husband.

The instructions were to rub the greasy cream into every inch of our bodies, from the earlobes to the toes, at bedtime, then twelve hours later take a shower and wash bedsheets, mattress cover, bed skirt and every stitch of clothing we had worn over the preceding two days in hot water.  And vacuum everything.

It was exhausting, but it worked.  My mites died and I stopped itching almost immediately.  Vet #2, who is versed in Chinese medicine, gave me a bottle of Four Marvels powder to help Bisou's coat, and it has grown back marvelously, a deeper, richer red than ever.  But neither the vet nor the doctor was able to explain how I managed to get dog mange, and why the mites prospered on my skin.

A couple of mornings ago Bisou burst into high-pitched barks.  I looked out and there was the neighborhood fox, ambling through our yard on his elegant narrow legs.  He was wearing his full winter fur, thick and red and healthy-looking.  I have always loved foxes.  But as I watched him disappear into the bushes, I found myself scratching my neck.

Dog Walk in the Gloaming

Wolfie had one of his bad-limp days on Sunday, and I was thinking maybe he shouldn't come on our evening walk.  But when it was time to leave, my husband decided to join us and, hating to leave Wolfie alone, I put leashes on him and Bisou and we set off on one of Wake Robin's many paths.

You could wander practically forever in the woods here.  The paths themselves are a thing of beauty, meticulously cleared, with lots of signs so you don't get lost, and little plank bridges over awkward spots that always make me think of Japan.  You'd think people come to places like Wake Robin to get away from chores.  But here the residents tap maples and boil sap for syrup;  keep honeybees;  do battle against buckthorn and poison parsnip;  and maintain the trails.  It's the Vermont take on aging.

The woods at this time of year are starting to get that slightly toasted look--the acid greens of spring giving way to the avocado shades of late summer--and on the tips of distressed trees and bushes you can see tinges of red.  The birds, finished with their parenting duties, are mostly silent now.  The crickets are still chirping, but their slower rhythm tells me that fall is around the corner.

Bisou and I led the way down the darkened path.  Behind me Wolfie hopped on three legs--I could hear the heavy thud of each step as he came down on his good front left.  He was panting loudly with the effort.  "Do you think he'll get exhausted when we were far from home?"  I asked my husband.  "At least the ground on the paths is easier on his joints than asphalt," he said.

It's hard to know what to do about Wolfie.  He spent a day at a diagnostic center a couple of weeks ago, and had lots of x-rays, which showed abnormal bone growth on his metatarsals.  His joints are clear--it's not arthritis.  The bone growth could be caused by cancer or by a horrible fungus, but the vets agree that either of those would have made him much sicker by now.  We've tried him on different kinds of pain meds, none of which appear to make any difference.

He doesn't seem to be in acute misery.  His coat looks fine and his appetite is good.  He's mostly enthusiastic about going on walks.  But oh, the sight of that big black dog hopping clumsily on three legs!

While Wolfie hopped and I worried, Bisou was busy collecting teeny tiny sticky burrs all over her long, wavy ears, the gold feathers on her legs and belly, and her lovely red tail.  Every day after our walk I have to comb the things out of her coat, and lately they've gotten so bad that I'm almost tempted to stop walking in the woods and stay on the paved paths.  But as soon as the weather turns cool the ticks will hatch again (spring and fall are their favorite seasons), and then the woods will be out of bounds until the serious cold arrives. 

We walked for almost an hour, and by the time we neared the house Wolfie had stopped hopping.  This could either mean that he no longer hurt, or that he was so tired of walking on three legs that he had to put his bad foot down despite the pain.  Of one thing there was no question, though:  he was happy.

So at least for now, while the days are long and we're still able, before the ticks hatch and the snow flies, we'll keep on walking the paths.

Poor Wolfie

Nobody can figure out what's wrong with him. 

It started slowly, four years ago, when I noticed that Wolfie had lost some stamina.  He still ran flat out, stretching his long legs as far as they would go, covering amazing amounts of ground in a few seconds.  But he didn't do it for quite as long as before.

The vet diagnosed anaplasmosis, a tick-borne disease, and treated him with antibiotics, which are normally quite effective.  In Wolfie's case, however, they weren't, so we treated him again.  Nothing much changed, but he was fine in all other respects--shiny black coat, good appetite, a friend to all.

Time passed and--so gradually that I often wondered if I was imagining it--Wolfie's energy continued to  decrease.  He was, after all, five years old--not a puppy anymore.  Still, he should have been in his prime, so I had him checked again.  All tests came back clear but, just in case, the vet prescribed a third course of antibiotics.

Then about a year ago, one day when he had stopped to feast on some deer poop in the field, I called him and as he ran towards me I noticed a slight limp on his right foreleg.  The next day, it was gone.  I had forgotten all about it when, a week later, the limp came back, and this time it was more pronounced.

In the following weeks I paid close attention to that foreleg, trying to figure out what triggered the limp.  Often, he'd be fine at the start of a walk but limping at the end, but other days he would start off limping and improve by the time we got back home.  Cold weather, warm weather, shifts in barometric pressure--none of it seemed linked to the limp, which came and went according to its own mysterious rhythms.

One thing was certain:  it was getting worse.  On the day when I saw Wolfie holding up his big paw and hobbling on three legs, I rushed him to the vet.  She noticed considerable muscle loss on his right side, and I made an appointment to have him sedated and x-rayed.  While he was under, the vet also drew blood for more tests.

The good news was that his skeleton was in perfect order for a seven-year-old dog, and his blood tests showed no indication of disease.  The bad news:  we still had no explanation for the limp.  The vet consulted various specialists, who were as baffled as she and could only recommend cat-scans and sonograms as the next step.  She put him on a drug for nerve pain, and when he showed no improvement, on an anti-inflammatory.  Nothing changed, except that the limp got worse.

Now, on good days he puts weight on all four legs, though with a noticeable limp.  And by the end of the walk he's lagging behind--a new experience for me (all my dogs, without exception, have been forgers).  On bad days he hops pathetically on three legs, coming down heavily on his good side--thump, thump, thump--so that it hurts to watch him and I take him home after a few minutes and make him lie down and, just to make myself feel better, give him a massage.

Our walks have not only grown shorter, but I've also relaxed all my obedience-school notions about  not allowing the dog to sniff, etc.  Now, as we amble out of the cottage, I indicate the general direction for the day--into the woods and towards the open field, or towards the beehives, or on the paved road--and then give Wolfie free rein, so to speak, to stop and sniff and mark (without lifting his leg, which he can't do these days) to his heart's content, and then go on until a new smell catches his attention.

He's still big and black and shiny-coated.  If you come to the house he will hop over to you and greet you like a long-lost friend and lash you with his wagging tail.  He still hasn't given up hopes, despite their mutual neutered status, of having children with Bisou.

We've had to find a new vet since our move, and we're going to him for a second opinion next week.  I'm hoping that, when I report back to you, I'll have a different story to tell.

The Plopping Breed

After flying like a bullet through the late-summer fields, Bisou comes back covered with burrs.  They are tiny and sticky and in less than a minute her silky hair forms big tight mats around every single one of them.

I put her belly-up on my lap and go to work--her long ears first, then the pale gold hair on her chest, the feathers on her legs, the weird long hairs that grow between her toes and are a mark of her breed.  No matter how careful I am, pinching the hair between the mat and the skin to keep from tugging, and making short strokes with the comb, it hurts.

Yet she stays in position, her wide eyes firmly fixed on mine, reaching up periodically to lick my face.  I have brushed a lot of dogs in my life--large and small, long- and short-haired, tough and sensitive--but never one like this.

This is what more than four-hundred years of selective breeding gets you.

Cavalier King Charles Spaniels became popular in the 17th century under King Charles II of England.   The King was never without his pack of "spaniels gentle," and published an edict allowing the little dogs to appear in public anywhere in the kingdom.  (I would take Bisou everywhere with me too, if I didn't feel guilty about leaving Wolfie behind.)

After the burrs and the mats are gone, Bisou shakes herself and plops down on my lap.  She is an excellent plopper.  It seems impossible to me that a dog with her muscles and speed and passionate drive can turn it all off in an instant, and just plop.  I wish I could be like that.

Four centuries of breeding do not come without a price, however.  Cavaliers are plagued with heart problems, neurological problems, eye and ear problems, so it's crucial to pick from healthy stock.
But before you even think of getting a Cavalier, you need to be prepared for the plop issue.

Whenever she's not chasing balls or frogs or butterflies, your dog will want to be on your lap.  In the hottest hours of the year she might temporarily desert your lap to lie down next to you, but the entire length of her body will be right against your sweaty leg.  Then the minute the temperature drops, she will, with a groan of deep satisfaction, plop down on your lap again.

If you own a Cavalier, make sure before you sit down that you have at hand your phone, your book, your computer, your coffee, and your reading glasses, since once a Cavalier has plopped on your lap, you don't get up for trivial reasons.  She will be deaf to your commands to move, and if you try to shift her she will somehow make herself infinitely heavier than her eighteen pounds.  You will have to lift her bodily, and when you come back to your chair having retrieved whatever it was you thought you had to have, she will have moved into the warm spot that you left behind, and you will have to shift her again.  Fortunately, she won't hold that against you.

Over the four years that Bisou's been with me, I've gotten used to my little red shadow.  In the beginning, she would periodically disappear and I would search all over the house for her.  Now I know, if she's not either on me or within a couple of yards of me, to check the bedroom closet.  She follows me in there when I get dressed, and sometimes when I leave she's busy sniffing shoes and I shut the door before she can get out.

King Charles was a man of taste.  He wore little heels and long curly wigs and liked to have fun.  He made it legal for women in England to act on the stage, and without him we wouldn't have  Dames Vanessa, Helen, Judi or Maggie.  But worst of all, I wouldn't have Bisou.

Bisou and the King

Tick Attack!

We are under siege by creatures the size of fly poop.  Like Agamemnon's army they surround our house on all sides, dropping down on us from the trees if we go into the woods and climbing up our pant legs if we venture into the field.  The only place where we are relatively safe is the yard, where the grass is still short.

2012 was a bad tick year, and we blamed it on the early spring.  There's been nothing early about this spring, and the winter was good and cold.  But the ticks just holed up in their deer fur duvets and now, like the rest of us, they want to be out doing stuff. 

Every time the dogs come back from a walk I check them over, but it's just a formality.  What chance do I have of finding a crawling fly speck in Wolfie's super-thick undercoat?  Bisou, whose hair though long is much sparser, should be easier, and sometimes I do catch one crawling around.  But I usually don't find them until the next day, with their heads deep into her skin, sucking away like tiny Draculas.

These are bad enough, but not as awful as the ones that drop to the floor like ripe olives, having had their fill of blood and transmitted their parasite du jour into my dogs.  Bisou has had Lyme for a couple of years, though fortunately you'd never know it from watching her.  Wolfie has anaplasmosis, another tick-borne illness, and despite three courses of antibiotics has never regained his stamina.  Most of the dogs I know have Lyme, and several of my human friends do as well.  New diseases carried by ticks are identified every year. 

Tomorrow my dogs are scheduled for their annual vet check-up.  She and I will have a depressing discussion about which insecticides do the most harm to the ticks and the least harm to the dog.  There are no good answers.  For decades I have held fleas at bay by sprinkling liberal amounts of garlic powder on the dog food, but there are no natural tick deterrents, and every few years ticks develop resistance to the latest manufactured toxins.

Fortunately, the tick offensive doesn't last all summer.  It will diminish in early summer, just as the black flies emerge.  Black flies show definite preferences for certain people, of whom I am one.  They leave me with bleeding, itchy welts around the back of my neck.  But they are little sweethearts, compared to ticks.

Lexi's Outing

I don't often write about my twelve-year-old German Shepherd, Lexi, because these days she's mostly quiet. This is not to say that she is inactive, however: she amuses herself during the day by playing invisible power games with the other dogs. She parks herself in certain spots in the kitchen or living room and suddenly I'll hear either Wolfie or Bisou give a pathetic whine and I'll go see what's wrong and they're standing on the other side of Lexi, "trapped," even though there is plenty of room to go around her. I don't know how she does this, because she isn't growling or giving any outward sign that I can read. It must be her aura.

Lexi is in good health, except for the fact that her musculoskeletal system is falling apart--arthritis in the hips, the elbow, the knee, the spine. So every six weeks she and I go on an outing, to the vet. This involves getting out the heavy dog ramp, unfolding it, leaning one end against the edge of the cargo compartment of the Subaru, then telling Lexi that no, she can't jump into the car, she must use the ramp. Once she's settled, I take down the unwieldy contraption, fold it while trying not to catch my fingers in it, put it in the back seat, and we're on our way.
Lexi loves going to this vet, who started out as an "ordinary" vet and then decided to specialize in chiropractic and acupuncture. She is a soft-spoken, slow-moving young woman who always tells Lexi what she is about to do and shows her what she is going to do it with, namely, the acupuncture needles.

First, however, she has Lexi get up onto a low, towel-covered platform and goes over her entire body with her hands. Then, slowly and gently, using the thumb and little finger of one hand while supporting Lexi's belly with the other (Lexi has trouble standing for long periods), she adjusts Lexi's spine. Meanwhile I'm holding Lexi's head, and she and I gaze into each other's eyes, and generate oxytocin.
Then the needles go in, and Lexi is allowed to lie down and, as the vet puts it, "cook" for a while. For the next ten or fifteen minutes, the vet and I sit on either side of Lexi--I on the floor, the vet on the platform--talking idly of dogs or politics. But most of the time we are silent, and focused on Lexi. And under our combined gaze Lexi seems to expand, and takes on a kind of glow. Part of it is the action of the needles, part the anticipation of the fabulous treats that the vet dispenses at the end of the session. But I think that it is being the focus of our relaxed and caring attention that transforms Lexi every time.

Strangely, by the time the needles come out I feel as if I've undergone some kind of therapy myself. I put Lexi back in the car and drive home through the Mettowee Valley, looking at the cows, watching out for cyclists, wondering if the farmers got enough hay in to last the winter. At home Wolfie and Bisou, who have forgiven us for leaving them behind, throw themselves into our arms. I eat my lunch, and Lexi carefully lowers herself down in one of her power spots, and takes a nap.

The Story of Theo, Bisou's Brother

Last December, as we prepared to welcome our descendants for the holidays, I felt disaster looming. There would be eight of us humans in the house, and three dogs. The dogs included one cranky geriatric grande dame--Lexi; one well-intentioned but large and boisterous young male--Wolfie; and the so-called Red Baroness, Bisou. Two German Shepherds, one Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy. Snow and sleet outside. Meals and creature comforts to be seen to inside. And Bisou needing round-the-clock supervision lest she disgrace herself on the rugs.

I decided that, if worse came to worst, I could always board Bisou, or Wolfie and Bisou, or Wolfie, Lexi and Bisou, for the duration. But first I would see how things went.

In fact, it all went swimmingly. The children liked Bisou, because she was smaller than they and didn't knock them over with her wagging tail, like Wolfie does. And my Montana daughter and her partner quietly took over the monitoring of Bisou so that she did not once mess in the house. "Truly," I said to myself, "it takes a village to raise a puppy," and cancelled my just-in-case reservations at the kennel.

In the course of that Christmas season, I noticed that, between house-training trips to the frozen backyard, my daughter and her partner were never too far from Bisou. They sat by the fire and read with Bisou on one of their laps, her red ears fanned sweetly across their thighs. They napped on the sofa with Bisou snoring in their arms. And periodically I would catch one or the other of them just sitting there, stroking that soft red fur, with a far-away Madonna-like look on her face.

Three days before they were scheduled to fly back to Montana I said casually "You know, one of Bisou's littermates is looking for a home...." A while later I added, "He's a male, and Cricket would love a puppy to play with" (Cricket is their elderly mixed-breed female). I scanned their faces and went on, "I could call the breeder and see if she'd let you have a look...."

The next day, at the breeder's, I watched the faces of my daughter and her partner as Theo--black with tan markings and infinitely sweeter and mellower than Bisou--took turns on their laps. Sure enough, the Madonna look was there.

Now if it had been me, I would have stuck Theo under my coat and flown with him to Montana the next morning. But these are rational, deliberate women, and they went back home and thought about it, and conferred with vets, and corresponded with the breeder. And a couple of months later my daughter took a week off from work and came to Vermont to fetch Theo.

Theo is now a dog of the wide open spaces. He gets along with Cricket. He attends obedience class. And he goes to work every day.

My daughter is a clinical psychologist, and Theo is her co-therapist. He sits on clients' laps, letting himself be petted while my daughter asks the hard questions. He listens well, and if he yawns in the middle of a session, nobody feels offended. He gets Wednesdays off, to stay home with Cricket and be a dog.

Here in Vermont, a lot of people ask about Theo. They want to know how he dealt with the plane trip, how he adjusted to Montana, whether he is o.k. The reason for these questions, and the reason that Theo was still looking for a home at Christmas, is that he was born with a rare heart problem--sub-aortic stenosis--not the genetically transmitted cardiac condition that threatens so many Cavaliers, but a problem that affects many different breeds. The average life span of a dog with sub-aortic stenosis is five years--that's the bad news. The good news is that Theo will be able to lead a normal life until one day--two or five or ten years from now--he will suddenly die.

The thing about this problem of Theo's is that it makes him seem so extraordinarily fragile, even as it reminds those of us who know him of our own fragility. We all--dogs, cats, humans, the Gulf of Mexico--are hanging by a thread, and there are no guarantees. Learning to love Theo despite the likelihood of his sudden disappearance is a lesson for learning to love anybody and anything in this world--a lesson that we can never afford to stop learning.