Apologies for long post but my heart is hurting...
My lovely old rogue of a rescue dog Hector has developed cognitive canine decline AKA CCD / doggie dementia over the last seven months or so. To start with the symptoms were quite manageable, but they've got worse over time. We put him on a drug called vivitonin and this did help for a while. However the symptoms started to come back again and so he is now on the other common drug to treat this condition, Selegeline as well as the original drug. The second drug takes longer to have an effect and he's been on it around three to four weeks without much sign of improvement.
Physically he is very strong and robust and looks the picture of health, shiny coat and bright eyes.. However his character has completely changed. Whereas before he was very sociable and gregarious, he now takes himself off upstairs away from everyone and sleeps in one of the bedrooms on his own. Sometime around late afternoon/ early evening he will become very confused and anxious and starts barking really loudly. It's like he doesn't really know why he's doing it and it's quite distressing and also bloody annoying! The only thing which can snap him out of this is to either take him out for (another!)walk, which helps him forget about it - Or - one of us has to go upstairs with him and then he will settle. This means either one of us is having to go upstairs for the rest of the evening anytime from around 6 p.m. onwards which is ridiculous. Apart from when he goes out for his walks (which he still really enjoys), he just isolates himself upstairs. He is very hyper alert when it comes to noises. The smallest sound, such as chinking crockery or scraping a chair really startles him and he gets really scared. Often his body will tremble all over and he has a look of confusion on his little face.
If he was suffering physically, if he had cancer or something like that it would make it so much easier to make a decision about whether to keep him going or not. I would never keep a dog going for my own sake as I believe it's our duty to do the right thing by them.
Im finding it so hard to know whether his time has come. Even if the latest drugs start to kick in, it will be a temporary fix.
I've read of other dogs with CCD who walk in circles, get stuck in corners, soil indoors, do not recognise their owners, etc. none of these things are happening to him yet so I guess in the grand scheme he's not that bad.
If anyone can offer any words of wisdom, it would be much appreciated, especially if you have gone through something similar. I've had dogs all my life but none of them have had this condition. I do look at him sometimes and feel like his personality is not there anymore, but is that a good enough reason to have him PTS?
Please let me know if you think I'm being too hasty as he's not that far gone compared to others I've heard about.