Just before Easter of 2007, we went on the website for the SPCA of Western Quebec. We saw a beautiful border collie named Minus looking back at us.  We went out to see him on Easter Monday but they were closed. Two very helpful young women were there and let us take a look at him.  We had our border collie in the car and they looked so much alike and we fell in love immediately.  We were told that he needed surgery on his front legs or he would be unable to walk by the time he was 5.  We thought it would be a lot to take on and we went home thinking that we would not adopt him. We saw an article in the paper about a dog needing surgery (at that time he was called Oreo) and called Jennifer and found out it was the same dog.  After a few conversations with Jennifer and a lot of soul searching, we decided that we wanted to adopt him.  We went to get him on April 20/07 and when we got him home we started calling him Myn.  He came to that name so it has stuck. He went in for his operation on April 25/07 and everything went well.  He is a wonderful dog.

On July 23/07 something very scary happened.  Myn started having idiopathic cluster seizures (he has since been at the hospital 5 times).  We have learned to deal with his seizures and we realize how much we love him.  Myn has the most wonderful eyes; he seems to look right into your soul.  Anyone who has met him just wants to take him in their arms and hug him.  He is very cuddly but also loves to run and play with our other border collie (Cagni, who is 7 years old).  They have a great time together.  Myn loves to play catch and gives the ball back willingly.  He knows some commands like, sit, come, give and upstairs.  We still need to work on “leave it”.

I hope that we can get his seizures under control.  The doctors seem to think so once we get the right medication. Right now he is on Phenobarbital and potassium bromide. The seizures have never made us think that we should not have adopted him.  You can’t help but love him and want to take care of him.

On our last emergency visit to the hospital we made a decision to see a neurologist to find out if there are any other problems except for the epileptic seizures.  We hope we can find some answers.  We went to Montreal on October 31, 2007.  They decided not to do an MRI, the doctor just took him into a room and ran him through his paces and he did very well so they don’t believe there is a brain tumor or any brain damage.  He is on another medication to go along with the other two and this seems to be working well.  He had a seizure episode on November 3/07 but these were different as he remained alert and barked and whined between seizures as if he was aware that something was going on.  We went to the hospital anyway and the doctor looked at him and decided that he was ok to go home as he didn’t show any further signs of having another seizure. We know that they won’t go away but if we can just get them under control, we will be satisfied.

If anyone else has gone through seizures with their dog maybe Jennifer could help us get in touch and we could discuss how other people have dealt with this.

We will keep you updated on Myn.  We have a lot of people praying for him and would welcome your prayers.

Update:  Myn is doing great.  He hasn’t had a seizure since December 16/07.  He loves to run and play in the snow.  His medication has been upped to three half pills a day of the Keppra.  We are talking with the vet about giving him some Melatonin to help decrease his anxiety.  She is checking on things to make sure it doesn’t react with his other medication.  As you can see from the attached pictures, he thinks he owns the house.  Even the cat (Quinci) isn’t afraid of him.  They get along quite well.  Cagni and he are the best of friends but Cagni is camera shy and doesn’t like his picture taken so we just can’t get the both of them together.

We have learnt so much just by going on the Epi Website (Epil-K9 List) and hearing about other dogs with Epilepsy.

Update:  Well, four months have passed on April 16, 2008 since Myn's last seizure.  The medication is keeping them under control. 

Another big day passed - on April 20, 2008 we celebrated Myn's 1 year anniversary with us.  We bought both dogs a new toy and a new type of chewy bone.  They really liked both.  We also bought a cake and Don had written on it "MYN'S 1ST YEAR".  I think the cake was more for us but the dogs had a small piece.  Everything is going well and we are so glad that we adopted Myn last year.  We had a little trouble in the winter, both dogs discovered that they could walk over the fences into other people's back yards.  There was no way we could stop them, the snow was just too high.  One night Myn got out of the back yard he had escaped to and we went on a hunt.  Thank goodness we found him before anything bad happened.

Again we thank everyone over at the SPCA of Western Quebec for this wonderful little dog.  He is such a joy.

Sadly, we have learned that Myn made his journey to Rainbow Bridge on April 18, 2009.  Our thoughts and prayers are with Don and Marion through this difficult time.

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