An Update on My Doggie Jasper

Some people have written to ask me how my dog Jasper is doing. The good news is, he’s doing much better.

He started with a strange ear infection that quickly turned into something that was kind of eating his face. It spread around his eyes and nose and eventually all over his skin.

He was in a bad way. They gave him a powerful shot of antibiotics, then we tried various medications. They thought it was an autoimmune disease. Then they thought it was toxic shock.

That caught the attention of a dermatologist who had never seen it in a dog except once in 50 years. I brought Jasper to see her, and she said it wasn’t that. She thought it was pemphigus (an autoimmune condition). She told me to try taking him off prednisone to see if it got worse, and it did. He immediately had a fever, then the shakes, and more lesions.

That’s when I got very worried.

I was putting ice cubes on him for hours to bring down his fever, but no vet seemed to know what was going on. He started to sneeze, and there were blood droplets. A mobile vet came out because no emergency rooms were open, and she suggested I bring him to urgent care, which I did the following day.

By then, she said they were about out of options but suggested I stop giving him antibiotics. She also said that it was time to consider euthanasia. But I didn't want to give up, so I gave him one more day and night of ice cubes and cold cloths.

This was September 6.

Then, by some miracle, he began to improve. The vet gave him another kind of steroid, which might have had something to do with it. But he could walk around and wasn’t sneezing anymore.

I brought him back to the dermatologist, and she did another biopsy, and he began to slowly improve.

Now, he’s almost fully better. It’s amazing how fast he improved once we took him off antibiotics and started a different medication. The doctor believes flea medication might have set this whole thing off. He does have an autoimmune disorder - the name of which I can’t remember but it tends to be the kind that reacts to medication.

Now, we have to slowly take him down off of prednisone and see if he’ll be okay without meds. That will take time.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for him, wrote me asking after him, and cared about his well-being. It seems like he is on the mend. It also brought my two dogs together from what began as a kind of frosty relationship.

My 9/11 podcast is taking me longer than I thought because I have been watching so many videos and reliving that day, and it hit me harder than it did even 25 years ago.