Ernie’s Story: From Struggles to Snuggles

Safe and Sound contacted me and asked if I would go and pick him up from the pound to transport him to the kennels where he could stay while I worked with him.

Who could say no to saving this poor little soul?!

Kennel staff reported that he was “very good”. He was an easy dog for the kennels to care for because he did nothing. He was shut down. If a lead was put on him he would just go with them. The vet could examine him with no response. But there was nothing in his eyes. He was a shell. He didn’t put up a fight. He often didn’t even try to get away, if he felt cornered he just cowered on the spot.

He was the definition of learned helplessness (a state where an animal has learned that nothing they do has a positive impact on their situation and so they stop even trying).

After many, many visits, a very long time spent with me just sitting, he sniffed me!!! Huge progress! I remember staying still but probably grinning! What an achievement.

However, we couldn’t manage much more than that even after several more visits. And in the meantime he remained terrified of being in kennels.

I’d worked with him every few days for a month now and still just a few sniffs and still petrified.

And so…

Fostering Ernie

Progress was barely perceptible and his quality of life was not good. He spent every moment of his waking life frightened. 

Maybe he would be able to relax in a home environment?

One thing I was sure of:

This was purely temporary. 

I’d been a failed fosterer before and that was not going to happen this time. This time I would be strong.

*Ahem*

Other than his little Pug interaction I hadn’t been able to dog assess him in kennels. What would he think of Max?

Max is not the easiest dog to get along with. When he meets other dogs he is loud, he is direct, he can be very rude with persistent full body sniffing.

Could he be so threatening to Ernie that he snapped? What if Ernie had a history of dog aggression? I had no idea what his history was or how his behaviour might present once he decompressed.

The house was not big, didn’t allow for separate living spaces easily. So we had to manage introductions carefully.

We had a large crate that I popped Ernie into. Again he resumed his cowered posture in the corner.

After a little time we had to go ahead and bring Max in … and hope.

I brought Max into the room and let him see Ernie, then encouraged him out again to get his favourite tennis ball.

The idea was that he sees Ernie, then is encouraged to move away from Ernie and rewarded with his favourite thing. Seeing Ernie is a positive, and good things happening for moving away from him. This also let Ernie get used to seeing Max. He looked at Max but no other response.

Once all was calm I let Max approach the crate. It was the calmest I’ve seen Max with a new dog. It was almost like he looked at that little dog shaped lump and just pitied him. He was interested but easily distracted. Ernie was boring.

Ernie, on the other hand, eventually stood up! Only into a crouch, very low to the ground. But he made a choice. He stood up. He took a couple of careful steps towards Max, air scenting AND WAGGED HIS TAIL!!

A very cautious little wag, but a wag nonetheless. I had not seen that tail move, other to go further underneath him, in a month.

I would have loved to take him everywhere with me. He wouldn’t make a fuss. He wouldn’t bark, he wouldn’t be unmanageable. But he wouldn’t have felt safe. And that was our main priority.

Over time we started taking him to places where there were other people, but only at a level he could cope with. And this increased over time.

We never let unfamiliar people stroke him and always advocated for his needs. We didn’t take him inside busy places with other people. But eventually we could take him to sit outside at cafes and he could walk right past people on the street. A far cry from the total panic at seeing a person on the other side of a field.

Now you may have noticed I’m talking about the passing of years.

Ernie settled so well with us that the thought of him having to go through all that fear and start all over again just felt cruel. And, well, he had become part of the family.

His little character had blossomed, he had become confident and cheeky at home.

In fact, he had developed a rather large character!

We had a quiet home, perfect for him to continue blossoming. And we loved him.

I think he made himself quite at home – he loved getting cosy, lived in his jammies for well over half the year at home, and as you can see, sometimes was too lazy to even bother to lie down – why not just sleep on your face?!

Ernie’s illnesses

(Skip to the memories section further down if you want to avoid the sadder bits).

 

In January of 2024 Ernie experienced the first of his brushes with death.

At 2pm he was running around off lead on the common and jumping into my arms as usual.

At 2am he crawled into my bed shaking a full body shake. It was quite an extreme shiver, but, as is typical of Staffies, he was solar powered and easily got cold. So I put the heated blanket on, wrapped him up in the duvet and snuggled with him. It was January after all. But the shivering continued. I was worried but made a hot water bottle. Alas, still shivery.

I called the emergency vet that take on Out of Hours cases. The vet very generously spoke to me on the phone and suggested I try letting him outside, offering him some food and seeing if he behaves normally. If he does, go to his GP vet tomorrow, if not, bring him in.

He struggled to move, he was wobbly and really didn’t want to get up. He looked utterly miserable and turned down even tasty treats. Ernie was very greedy so this was also a huge deal.

So I bundled him into the car and we went to the vets. Because of his fear of people he just shut down and the vet was unable to find the problem. He gave him a strong pain killing injection and we went home. Perhaps he had strained something on the walk and being cold and still had caused it to become very painful. Ernie was sleepy when we got home, no more shivering.

The following day though he went downhill again so off we went to the GP vets.

A very high temperature due a raging infection was to blame. We couldn’t find the cause but he was very, very poorly and took a week to recover. Not being able to find the cause was concerning, but at least he was back to his normal self!

Almost exactly a year later and Ernie decided to make the major infection a tradition.

We knew what antibiotics worked for him. His vet was amazing. I think he wanted to find out what was causing these infections even more than we did!

He draw diagrams, made lists and did tests.

But we couldn’t find anything.

It took longer for Ernie to recover this time. It really knocked him about. And as with last year, he seemed absolutely fine until he suddenly really wasn’t. This gave the infection chance to really take hold before we could get started on helping him to fight it.

But fight it he did. Still no apparent cause, but a recovered Ernie.

Unfortunately Ernie became poorly yet again. Less poorly to start with this time.

It started out with a limp and being a bit “off”. He wasn’t fully weight bearing on one front leg. He was given pain relief and sent home for observations.

But then one of his rear legs started to become inflamed.

Cellulitis?

More antibiotics.

But one day I had to rush him in to the practice carrying him because he couldn’t walk at all by himself. It was a scary time.

He got a little better. But still looked utterly miserable.

Blood tests showed nothing concerning initially.

Ultrasounds showed nothing.

We were facing taking him to a specialist. All the testing would be so stressful for him. But he always bounced back. It was a lot to put him through, but it didn’t feel like we were at the end of the road just yet. No signs of cancer or other end-of-the-road type diagnoses.

Our wonderful vet continued the search.

And then another blood test later found that Ernie was having an auto-immune response. His body was destroying its own platelets. We had an answer for why he was so poorly. But not why it developed. Whilst it can be a primary diagnosis, his vet explained that it can also occur secondarily to cancer.

Oh.

He searched again for cancer and couldn’t find it. But he was convinced that was the cause.

Of course we hoped it wasn’t the case.

If the cancer was back there was a very high probability that it wouldn’t be treatable again. It wasn’t obvious enough to be found so very likely wouldn’t be operable.

We opted to manage the auto-immune response with steroids to suppress his immune response to give his platelets chance to replenish. Blood tests showed it worked.

After two weeks of daily trips to the vets, two full days in the vets on fluids and IV antibiotics (but coming home overnight to de-stress, eat and toilet which he wouldn’t do in the vets), then a few days of every other day monitoring, he was home and well again.

We’d been on holiday late November/early December and noticed during this time that Ernie wasn’t so quick to eat his breakfast. Not typical for Ernie, but we figured we were in an unfamiliar place, the food was different as we’d just bought a different bag of kibble locally (turns out we were more out in the sticks than I realised!). Maybe he just wasn’t as keen on it and was a bit more unsettled in a different place.

But unfortunately his appetite for breakfast didn’t pick up massively on the return home. He was still wolfing down treats, eating his breakfast at lunch time and eating tea fine. He seemed absolutely fine in himself. Maybe he’s getting older and his appetite is reducing?

Max was starting to feel his age more, and our walks were slower. In fact Max had been quite poorly and had investigations and treatments of his own going on.

But in mid-January I looked at Ernie sitting in his chair and he had one eye partially closed.

So off we went to the vets. And while there I explained that Ernie hadn’t seemed his usual greedy self.

The vet felt that with his history it would be a good idea to do an ultrasound and just see if anything looked amiss.

So on January 21st Ernie went for his scan (incidentally, Max was booked in for a scan to confirm a tumour presence the following day). I left Ernie at the vets so they had time to have a good look around.

When the vet called me and told me he had what looked like at least one tumour, his liver and kidneys were smaller than she would like, and he was bleeding internally with a major blood vessel wall looking stretched dangerously thin I was shocked. She was really surprised he was behaving so normally, and just walked into the vets perfectly capably. Again, he was hiding things so well.

She explained that the blood vessel could burst at any time and that this could be quickly fatal. She said if that happened it would be very distressing.

I asked if it would be distressing for him, or for us. She confirmed it would likely be more distressing for us than for him.

And so in that case I felt comfortable to bring him home with pain relief and to have some time with him at home.

Given that his prognosis was that he could pass away at any moment, or his quality of life may reduce significantly and quickly, we got to working through a bucket list.

The next night Ernie had a McDonald’s bacon cheeseburger with chicken nuggets for his tea! We genuinely thought it could be his last meal.

But the next day he was still with us. And happy too! His normal self. Wonderful.

That night he had 2 jumbo sausages from the chip shop.

The night after that he had a mini pizza.

The night after that we got him a Puppacino from Starbucks.

The look on his face when he realises this amazing treat is for him!

Ernie had a hard start to his life. But he was so very content with how it turned out.

He was one of those dogs who was just happy every day.

He loved his walks, loved his bed and heated blanket, loved his chair, getting fed twice a day and his chews, treats and games. He enjoyed training, and running, sniffing and rolling in the grass or against his chair. He loved to sunbathe and sniff the air.

He found joy in the small things.

Maybe because, rather than despite, all he had been through he was happy with his small group of trusted human family and animal friends.

We never forced him to be social, we helped him to grow into his own capabilities and live a fulfilled life.

We never forced him to be someone he wasn’t. And because of that he really grew into himself.

He was who he was. He had a great sense of humour. He would fall over at times doing something silly and just stay lying there with this big grin on his face and madly wag his tail before leaping up. Like he appreciated that it was silly.

He slept deeply, not a care for his jowls hanging or tongue poking out, snoring, dreaming and farting with abandon!

He was Ernie.

He was (and will forever be) so very much loved.