Head-tilting animal sickness a mystery
If you’ve been on a merry-go-round lately you’ll know how Dfor felt when he tried to negotiate his way in to the hospital this week.
Yes – it is Dfor. I haven’t had one of those for a long time. D for dog and C for cat (Cfor).
Poor old Dfor is normally a very shaggy 8-year-old springer spaniel with his nose firmly planted on the ground, but that day he was a very wobbly spaniel.
Graeme had been out till the small hours after the rugby and had been all set to take Dfor to the river that morning to clear out the fuzzy head, but found Dfor having difficulty getting up, and when he did, his balance was terrible. Graeme thought it was himself at first and had to stop and check that he wasn’t dreaming, he described with a laugh.
Dfor’s head was tilted to one side and his eyes were flicking back and forth.
Graeme was understandably concerned and thought that Dfor had had a stroke. I guess this could be true, but my patients don’t generally suffer from strokes.
The symptoms Dfor was displaying usually indicate a problem with the middle or inner ear.
Some of the possible causes include:
❚ Severe ear infections
❚ Grass seeds that have perforated the eardrum
❚ Tumour of the middle ear area or brain
❚ Head injury
❚ Unknown cause.
A full examination showed no obvious abnormalities, including both his ears, which were clear, with nice healthy ear drums.
Next step is to make sure there isn’t anything else going on.
Dfor is such a great patient and he sat quietly while we collected a blood sample. It is really important to mention that blood tests are an important tool for us because my patients can’t talk.
It is also important to inform people that they don’t show up everything and certainly don’t indicate if tumours are present, generally. Dfor got the all clear on the blood tests.
With Dfor’s breed and clear tests, the disease is very likely to be idiopathic. This sounds impressive, but actually means of unknown cause – nobody knows, or DKW disease – don’t know what. There does seem to be an increased incidence in the spaniel type breeds and it usually occurs suddenly overnight in older dogs.
We admitted Dfor and gave him some anti–nausea medication, along with some anti-inflammatories.
Within 24 hours he was much improved. His head was coming back to line, his eyes had stopped trying to position themselves in the right place and he could walk in a straight line.
This supported our diagnosis, as patients with no known cause in this breed do usually improve quickly with treatment. So, Graeme and Dfor were reunited and for a week anyway, Graeme said he would stay at home on Friday and Saturday.
Not all patients are that lucky. The other pet we see this type of disease in is rabbits.
These are sad cases though and often come in with severe head tilts and, when handled, they totally lose their balance and flip uncontrollably.
For most of my career no-one has known what causes this in rabbits and we used to treat them in a similar way to the dogs, but recently it has been shown that it is caused by a little nasty parasite with a big long name that affects the rabbit’s brain. It is difficult to treat and very few rabbits fully recover.
On a brighter note: Please keep a check on those long-haired cats and rabbits at this time of year. The thick winter coat and warm damp weather can be very attractive to flies, with disastrous consequences if they lay eggs.
Dfor is such a great patient and he sat quietly while we collected a blood sample. It is really important to mention that blood tests are an important tool for us because my patients can't talk.