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This is Egon We brought him home in July of 2015  He's had a pretty rough life so far. He's basically the sick kid, always coming down with something but always keeps a good mood. Last January he got Kennel Cough, Bordatella (are those 2 the same thing?), and Pneumonia all at the same time. A more pathetic pup face, I've never seen  He recovered like a champ, but we're a little worried that those 3 or so weeks of illness right in the middle of a big growth spurt might have stunted his growth a little. He powered back though and continued to practice using our couch  Now he's got it pretty dialed in  Here he is at almost a year old, he's about 100lbs at this point, still kind of puny  Next medical problem was this big rear end wart we named Cindy. Ended up having to get it surgically removed  Here he is posing to look a little more buff. You're not fooling anybody, Egon  In September of this year he got his nueter/gastropexy done. Had to wear t-shirts for about a month while recovering. I was so glad we didn't have to deal with the drat e-collar. We used it for about a day after his previous operation and he could barely move about the house without getting stuck on a door frame or knocking things off the table. He was just under 120lbs here  As soon as he recovered from this surgery he began having lots of diarrhea and vomiting. Ended up losing around 15lbs, so down to 105 in this picture. He actually ended up bloating at this time too, but luckily we had just pexi'd him so no torsion occurred. Felt so bad for him looking malnourished despite our best efforts  So we went to an internalist to figure out what's going on with his insides and he told us that it was either Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) or Lymphoma (gently caress). After about a week tests came back and turns out it turned out to be IBD! So now he's on a special diet, anti-biotics, pro-biotics, and steroids. He's finally putting on weight again and hopefully once he's transitioned to his new food he'll be able to live a more or less normal life. Sucks that he can't have any animal protein though, so most of his favorite treats are out of the question. Just a bland crappy diet for him, but at least he doesn't have cancer! Here's a bonus pic. "Do I haf fumfing sftuck in mah teef?" 
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Nov 22, 2016 20:41
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 10:46 |
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Writer Cath posted:I'm going to get a trainer to work with Tracker. She pulls on the leash, but she's getting the concept of "easy" down. Once the initial puppy excitedness wears off, she's okay on the leash. Our dog, Egon, is pretty much the same. He's coming up on his 3rd birthday and he still flips his poo poo if he can't go say hello to other dogs. So at his daycare or dog parks he's perfectly fine, but on his leash or in the car he's a monster the moment another dog is in sight. It kind of sucks because it means my wife basically can't take him on walks since he will drag her across the street to go harass other dog walkers. God help us all if he sees a cat.
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Apr 27, 2018 19:55
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I 100% agree. We use a gentle leader and he still pulls my wife where ever he wants. I think she is just really reluctant to use any kind of force. He tries to pull with me (when he sees another dog), but the nice thing about a gentle leader is that by pulling up on it you can basically force him to sit. However, being able to control his freak out is not the same as him not freaking out in the first place.
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Apr 27, 2018 20:54
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What the heck kind of very good boy is that?
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May 11, 2018 00:27
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Jowl storage capacity is an important factor in choosing the right dog for your needs.
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May 11, 2018 22:13
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*Frankenstein was actually the dude who created the monster!
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Aug 16, 2018 01:32
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That very good boy looks a lot like our very good boy, a 120lbs GD with IBD. We luckily got referred to a fantastic internist and he's been much better. Hopefully you have good luck too!
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Jul 6, 2019 03:01
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Good for you! No sarcasm, that's awesome and I love to hear when danes get to lead long lives. Our GD is 4.5 years old now and I've discovered that this is the age where everybody starts mentioning how short their life expectancy is whenever you tell them your dog's age. It's kind of hosed up to be honest. Like I know they have good intentions but it gets a little old to have this conversation: Oh he's so handsome! How old is he? He'll be 5 in May :-) Oh, wow you better make the best of the next year or two huh? Like jesus christ we don't need to discuss my dog's impending death. He's in as good of health as he can be (for a big dog with IBD) but I know his life expectancy is probably lower than most other dogs and probably many other danes. I already know that! Thanks for reminding me. Obviously instead of saying that I just let them know that yes many big dogs and pure breeds have shorter lives, but with improvements in veterinary care and practices and blah blah blah we can can hope for a fair bit more than 6 years of loving our dog, Egon.
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Jan 17, 2020 21:56
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Egon just riding out the COVID19 scare. Trying not to stress too much and taking things one day at a time. This dog really knows how to couch  A person can be a couch too 
Inspector 34 fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 21:33
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Different couch, same Egon. I forget which surgery this was after but a t-shirt was way easier for him than an e-collar.  Posing in front of his first couch 
Inspector 34 fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Mar 25, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 21:59
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Going back in time here before he realized couches are comfier than the floor He really didn't understand at first 
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Mar 24, 2020 22:05
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Doggo #1: WTF who gave you permission to take my picture? Doggo #2: Treats?!?
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May 29, 2020 07:49
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Magestic!
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Nov 7, 2020 03:39
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Posting here because big dogs sometimes need more & more expensive care so insurance can be a life saver. So if you get pet insurance let me just say this. gently caress Pet Plan. Go with literally any other option. Since they were purchased by some hedge fund back in 2018 our coverage has steadily declined. Going from an unlimited annual maximum, $250 deductible per illness/injury, and 90% reimbursement to our current $15k maximum (basically we would pay 100% of all vet bills once we hit $15k for the year, if you're not familiar with how this kind of plan works), $500 deductible, and 80% reimbursement. Doesn't seem so bad, but given our dane has IBD we're almost certain to hit the maximum one of these years so that sucks. We would totally understand if the premium went up as he got older (he's about to be 6 years old in 2 weeks) but the reduction in coverage made us really uncomfortable as it steadily declined each of the last few years. But now, holy poo poo. Still a $15k annual max, still a $500 deductible, but they're lowering our reimbursement to loving 20% of each vet bill. This is a dog with a chronic illness and he's on a lot of drugs to manage it, some of them immunosuppressants, which in turn means he's more susceptible to bloat, infections, and plenty of other things. But he's able to lead a mostly normal dog life and he's happy, energetic, and such a sweet boy. Now we don't know how long we'll be able to keep up with his bills since we also have a baby on the way (Yay!). It might just mean doing less testing for now, but that will make diagnosing harder and probably cost more in the long run and shorten his life even further. But eventually there will 100% be a super expensive procedure to do or a specialist to visit and when that happens we're going to be forced to make the worst decision. This really sucks. Pet Plan was fantastic for the few years we were with them before they were bought out. Now it's just a lovely cash grab. They reported something like $100m in profit last year but they need to cut our coverage? Whatever it takes to increase shareholder value I guess. gently caress Pet Plan. I've posted a few pics of Egon here before but here are some of my favorites just to make me feel a little less angry
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May 5, 2021 07:16
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He really is. He's snoozing on the red garage couch now, woofing and running in his sleep. Here are a couple more pics, including the saddest one from when he got pneumonia, giardia, and (I think) parvo all at the same time. That was when we finally went to a specialist and got the IBD diagnosis. Egon insisting that the couch is more comfortable than going to bed  Egon recovering from some procedure or another. He's good enough about stitches that a shirt will keep him from messing with them too much, we have narrow halls in our house and the e-collar was a poo poo show the couple of times we tried it.   Here's the sad one. This poor loving guy. We traded off spending time with him every couple hours each night since he'd need to go outside or just couldn't get comfortable enough to actually sleep. His look here is mostly a combination of lack sleep and maybe dehydration since he could barely keep anything down at the time.  Once his muzzle started going gray we figured he might as well finish out the look  Here's one right after he got some fluids at the vet. I had no idea they could just inject them subcutaneously like this. The hump gradually shifted down his shoulder but was mostly gone by the end of the day.  I have no idea what we're going to do with this insurance bullshit. Been spending the last couple hours just looking through all our photos and remembering all the stuff he's been through and how hosed we would have been without the insurance plan we had.
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May 5, 2021 09:09
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Yeah Trupanion seems like the way to go for us, plus our vet's preventative care plan to spread out the cost of his tests/vaccines and such. Unfortunately neither will cover IBD specific things since it's a preexisting condition so we're on the hook for a bunch of medications. Hopefully we won't need to change up his regimen anytime soon though since that'll involve specialist visits and testing and none of that will be covered either.
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May 11, 2021 01:27
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Tragic. Sorry for your loss. I know it doesn't help but 13 years of life is a drat blessing for any dog and I hope they were mostly happy days.
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Jul 14, 2021 04:38
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Beginning of the end for our boy Egon. 2 Fridays ago he stopped eating and had very labored breathing. Turns out it's congestive heart failure. His IBD meds have been causing him to retain too much water and it's started loving with his heart's ability to pump properly. 3 days later he was eating again, though he needed to be hand fed, and today he's finally just eating out of his bowl as usual. He's on something like 2 dozen pills a day to combat the IBD and heart issues now. Tomorrow we go to the cardiologist to see what his prospects are for the near future. Just loving sucks cuz he's still happy and energetic. Loves his treats and chasing those bastard squirrels out of the back yard. We've managed his IBD for over 6 years now and he's been pretty stable and this heart failure diagnosis just hit us out of nowhere. I'm sure he's nowhere near as happy as he lets on and that's tragic. He's so upbeat all the time but he must be feeling like absolute hell with all the stuff he's going through.
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Mar 29, 2022 10:13
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We use wipes to clean out our dane's ears every so often. I don't know the exact brand/type unfortunately but they seem to do a good job. Obviously you can't get in there super deep, but yeah you probably wouldn't want to anyway and these wipes seem to keep things from getting too gross in the reachable areas. Yet another reason it's important that your dog gets cool with being poked, prodded, and generally used to having their jowls, ears, and paws messed with a bit.
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Oct 27, 2022 07:41
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 We said good bye to this good boy this morning. He hung through IBD for 7+ years and congestive heart failure for 9 months but his last check up revealed that his liver was failing. Given his lack of appetite and recent weight loss we felt we should end his suffering. Godspeed Egon we'll see you in the next life. I loving suck at saying good bye, but the lady who came by to do this for us was very nice and I can't imagine it going any better than it did Inspector 34 fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Dec 21, 2022 |
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Dec 21, 2022 05:27
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 10:46 |
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Thank you. This is really tough. So much of our day-to-day life was structured around Egon and now the house just feels empty. It's honestly a little bit liberating, but the lack of stuff to do and attention to pay makes it fall pretty flat.
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Dec 21, 2022 06:17
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