Goodbye

Diary entry, 18.01.2012, Zsófia Virányi

Pictures of the day (1 image)   

On Monday night it happened that we had long expected. That we had long feared. Mainly. But sometimes, on the bad days, also hoped for it somewhat. For his sake.

Cherokee died on Monday night.

He was epileptic. Practically in his whole life of almost 2 years. The first series of seizures came when he was not even half a year old. Five of them in a couple of hours. We were terribly worried but the veterinarian examinations, then and ever since, did not find any abnormalities that could have been the reason. At that age, his brother, Apache also showed similar symptoms but luckily in a lot weaker form. We accepted that we were facing a most probably inherited problem again (just as in Taya’s case), and tried to do everything to reduce the number of seizures and to give Cherokee a good life in the pack.
From the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Dr. Ákos Pákozdy and Dr. Michael Leschnik examined, treated him and followed his development over the months. With sedatives it was possible to keep the seizures more or less under control but Chero was not fully among us. He was slower than the others, less responsive and less sensitive, had sometimes difficulties in differentiating our hands from food. He seemed to live in his little world. After a while it started to cause problems in his life in the enclosure and also when working with us. He regularly ran against the fence and occasionally had difficulties in coping with the terrain. We were left with the choice of giving him a lonely and impoverished life with limited interactions with other wolves and us or trying another kind of medical treatment. This is when Dr. Gabriella Kiss from the Hungarian Foundation for Epileptic Dogs joint the team of veterinarians fighting for Cherokee’s health. Changing the medication improved his life – Cherokee returned among us.

But sometimes when the weather changed he had bad days. Seizures came after seizures, they bent his body into U-shape, took his control away from him over his body, senses and mind. His eyes were blurred, he seemed not to recognize us and the other animals and was afraid of the most familiar things. It is over now. With his body also the seizures and the bad days are gone. He was – and remains – the white member of the black pack.