The Hound of the Duffervilles
Regular Duffywatchers may recall that for some time now, we have noticed changes in Duffy’s behaviour.
We’ve by and large attributed them simply to getting older - not least because we’ve observed a few similar patterns, mutatis mutandis, creeping into ourselves. Ahem.
Not all of these changes are unwelcome. She has, for example, gradually become less reactive when encountering other dogs - a blessed relief, which we attributed to the mellowness of maturity. We were thus able to enjoy a couple of hitherto unimaginable pleasant meetings with friends in Pickering beer gardens, and even an extended, relaxed picnic (nearly 6 hours!) to enjoy the York Mystery Plays.
As said changes got gradually more pronounced and were joined by more changes, we continued to assume natural ageing. A less lustrous coat… less resilient skin… a few furless patches… what can only be described as “a bit of a pot belly”… but still undeniably and unequivocally our Duffy.
As long-standing Duffywatchers may well recall, she has always had a voracious appetite. So it wasn’t surprising, for example, that she was practically crawling onto Robert’s lap, willing him to drop some Serrano shavings from the hunk o’ pig I’d bought for his birthday. Any dog would do that, right? And look - isn’t it good that she’s drinking lots of extra water - it’s so hot, so it’s great that she’s keeping hydrated. She doesn’t spend as much time on the sofa with us these days… but it’s so hot. No wonder she needs some space and is looks so uncomfortable and lethargic - I often feel like that and I’m not even encased in a fur coat. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But then a few a few months ago, we realized that the gradual accretion of changes, and the scale of some of them, had ended up at least potentially suggesting something more alarming.
For as long as we’ve known her, she’s eagerly troughed her food down, and vocally and determinedly pleaded for a ‘top-up’ treat or two on a practically daily basis. But this had escalated so much that she was having at least half as much dinner again, on top of the recommended amount - and even then still unable to settle, and frantically begging for more. It was clear that this was more frenzied than a steadily-growing sense of entitlement which had been indulged by us for so long that it was a new baseline.
Similarly, she’s always been a opportunistic scavenger, trying to pounce on any discarded food spotted during walks, and shamelessly signalling to anyone we pass who happens to be innocently eating their lunch that we keep her in a permanent state of starvation, “so surely that tasty whatever-it-is-you’re-eating must be for me, right”? She’s a dog, and a rescue dog at that… so it’s hardly unusual behaviour, even after six years of a soft life. But this had gradually escalated to ridiculous proportions. (I won’t go into details. Let’s just say that she developed frenetically determined obsessions, when out and about, for items which should not count as ‘food’ in even the hungriest of dogs’ lexica.)
Leia: Governor Tarkin & Duffy…. I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.
Moff: Charming to the last.
Duff: Rude. …But fair.
And yet, I suddenly realized, she was not gaining weight, despite all the extra food.
And then there was the breath… oh good grief, the breath!
I mean… dogs aren’t, of course, renowned as having the best breath of the animal kingdom, but a daily regime of at least attempted dental hygiene had meant that Duffy had always been excellent company on that front. Until she wasn’t.
It was clear that something was wrong, so off to the vet we went - hoping that the diagnosis would be simply dental (ergo eye-wateringly expensive, as that’s not covered by our insurance, but relatively not-ominous), but fearing a worse outcome, and berating ourselves for not having clocked the potential causes of her incremental behaviour changes sooner. As ever, Duffy was delighted to see the vet.*
*[No really. She has always absolutely loved everyone there. Not just because they make a fuss of her and give her treats. But clearly quite a bit because of that]
Which is just well, as we’ve had several visits over the last few weeks.
The first set of bloods didn’t show obvious signs of the most likely suspects of cancer, diabetes, or kidney or liver failure, so she was booked in for an ultrasound to have a closer look. One more happy adventure with her favourite friends - without so much as a farewell glance to us when we dropped her off - and one charming abdominal buzz-cut later… the ultrasound (probably) corroborated the bloods’ tentative conclusions, further corroborated by another set of bloods while she was still groggy from the anaesthetic. This led to a new working theory, to be tested by two more sets of bloods, either side of a hormone injection, a few days later.
So yes, she’d become a jolly expensive pin cushion by this point, but things could have been a whole lot worse.
And so, it seems that Duffy has Cushing’s Disease. As one of the likely readers of this post is a vet, I suspect that at least one of you will have diagnosed her several paragraphs back, but for those of you who - like us until recently - have not encountered this before… Cushing’s is caused by an overproduction of cortisol. It’s the most common canine endocrine disorder, apparently, presenting in ca 0.3% of all dogs, and especially older ones.
The headline news is that although it’s not curable, it is manageable, allowing good odds for a good quality of life, for a good while at least.
Hopefully we’ve caught it early enough for this to be the case. Although the diagnosis wasn’t 100% certain, we were warned that if Cushing’s isn’t the culprit, the medication would make her rather poorly fairly quickly. Inevitably, we googled (always dangerous, of course, but we all do it, right?!), and the online symptoms map onto Duffy’s almost exactly - right down to a practically bald tail (which we’d assumed was simply because she’d been thwacking it against everything - doors, our legs, etc. - even more than usual).
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Besides… between us, of COURSE we’d end up with an elderly, expensive diva-dog, with a drastic hormonal imbalance named after an extremely hammy actor… And of course said actor would be Robert’s second-favourite Sherlock Holmes and most-favourite Star Wars villain, whose heyday was the 1950s-early 1980s!*
*[It’s OK. I do know that it’s actually named after a different Mr Cushing, whom I’m sure was also lovely.]
We’re two-and-a-half weeks into her new meds now, and no sign of contra-indications so far.
Moreover, we’re both pretty sure that Duffy is at least a little more herself again. She’s drinking a lot less, seems a little less lethargic, and has started happily curling up with us on the sofa again. Follow-up bloods are scheduled for November, unless things change for the worse.
Her demands for extra food are still urgent and insistent, but, we think, a little less frenzied, and most days we get away without giving her quite as much over her recommended amount. So we’re just back to the good old tried-and-trusted MO of extortion of bread products via extreme guilt-trip action…
For now, then, all that remains is for us to recover our equilibrium and adjust to the new normal, wherein her monthly drug habit is more expensive than our vinous version thereof!
