Kera
Success Stories
Kera
National, PA - 2014
My name is Dena and the Brown Dog Organization has changed my family's lives! I reside with my husband Mike and our son Tom. We also have a daughter Samantha who is putting herself through college while working as a vet tech for a New Jersey vet clinic. We also have three other "kids", our three german shepherds! Zen is our white male, Kera (all black) and Serenity (bi-color) are our females.
About 3 years ago our girl Kera started acting strange. When I say strange I mean she could not get enough water, no matter the source she would fight tooth and nail to get some whether it be out of the toilet or in our pond, not so good sources to get a drink from. Then she started urinating in the house, a lot! And sometimes she would drink so much she would throw it all back up right after. Let's just say we have been through 3 carpets and had to replace one of our wood floors. We also had to make adjustments to our pond and bathrooms so that she could not get in, this proved to be extremely difficult with her being able to turn doorknobs and open doors and she managed to bust through metal wire to get to the pond, she seemed to be unstoppable!!
I had done much research online before taking her to the vet and what I kept seeing with her very blatantly obvious symptoms was Insipidus Diabetes. So we took her to the vet and had a blood and urine work up done on her. I mentioned Insipidus to the vet and they shrugged at first speaking of how rare that is (as she laid on the floor and just urinated all over). They thought maybe regular diabetes but I thought no way, this dog will jump through fire to get a drink and then urinate at least 5 times in the house when she certainly knows better, this has to be something more. So after her bloodwork came back just fine (luckily no internal organ damage) they ruled out regular diabetes and her urine showed it was extremely dilute, so this proved she was not absorbing the water she was drinking, which is why she had to keep drinking it.
She was then prescribed a very expensive eye drop called desmopressin. It took the edge off and helped a little but my husband had just lost his job and we knew we could not afford the $150 or so a month her meds would cost, plus she was still destroying things to drink and urinate. That's when I turned to Brown Dog Organization for help because I was very close to giving her to a rescue or someone who could care for her better than we could. We were exhausted with the constant clean up and the cost of everything was overwhelming.
After an eval done by Brown Dog they agreed to help us with her medicine. It just seemed the meds weren't helping like they should and again we were feeling desperate and still searched for someone who could take her in. I spoke to the vet and Brown Dog Organization about changing her meds to an oral form rather than an eye drop and we got our beautiful, shiny black german shepherd back!! What a difference these meds have made for her, she used to lose her hair and it was dull, her nose was cracked and dry and she suffered from breathing issues because of that not to mention she lost a ton of weight and was looking pretty bad.
Now, she is shiny, vibrant and beautiful and has gained her weight back, nose is cold and wet and she is full of life! It is amazing the transformation she went through just from finding the right meds and thankfully with help from the Brown Dog Organization who made this possible. My entire family is grateful that we were able to keep her and make her better with Brown Dog's help. Thank you from all of us for helping us in our hard times and keeping our entire family together.
