The Paradoxes of Zeke

My poor weird little dog and his health issues.

My dog Zeke, the bonkers, half-Chihuahua, half-Parson Jack Russel, ball of rage and food motivation has had a hellish ten months of health issues.

If you’ve followed the exploits of Zeke, enjoy doctor shows, or like figuring out medical paradoxes, you’ll find the following fascinating.

Last year, in April, Zeke had to go in for his annual dental exam and cleaning. Before the vet does this they do a quick check up and blood draw to make sure it’s safe to anesthetize the dog. It was after the blood draw that I was notified by the vet that Zeke’s dental would have to wait. The blood analysis showed Zeke having anemia and also his liver enzymes that were far too elevated.

This concerned the vet and lead her to believe that he possibly had liver or kidney disease. She prescribed that we place Zeke on a hepatic diet, which required buying (from the same store the vet worked at, of course.) an expensive food made for dogs with liver issues. Plus she said we should give him a liver supplement called Denamarin, which contains SAMe and Milk Thistle, the same stuff you can find in any human liver supplement, but at twice the price.

Because I love my little Zeke and wanted to be a good doggy daddy, I bought the expensive food and pills in hopes that it’ll help his condition.

I also asked the vet for an alternative to Zeke’s flea and tick medicine (Triflexis) which had doubled in price. The vet prescribed Simparica. We set Zeke up with a prescription gave him his first tablet at the start of May.

As for the new food, Zeke is one damn picky dog. When I dished out the hepatic food to him, he looked at the bowl of dry kibble, then looked at me, made a snort sound, and walked out to the living room, disgusted that I would offer him such bland crapola.

I had to admit, after looking at the ingredients which consisted mainly of corn meal, rice bran and vitamins, that I also wouldn’t find this appealing if evolution had designed me for mainly eating blood soaked meat, organs, and other fresh food.

I worked to make this crud more appealing. I boiled up chicken breasts, spinach, broccoli, carrots and peas, cooked some eggs, then ground the whole mess in with the dry food. I froze it in vacuum sealed packets so Zeke had food ready for weeks.

Zeke happily dove into this when it was warmed it up.

One problem solved.

But while that was going on, I kept an eye on Zeke’s health for any other abnormalities. Towards the end of May I noticed Zeke was developing tremors. I wasn’t sure if this was due to the liver issues or the switch to Simparica.

I did some further research into Simparica. It turns out the drug has reported incidences of dog deaths from its use. I decided that, given Zeke’s liver condition, it might be better to err on the side of caution and stop his use of this pesticide based drug so that we could rule it out as a cause of the Liver/kidney disease.

As for his diet, he continued on it for two more months, until Zeke’s next vet appointment to check his anemia and liver enzymes. During that visit, the vet checked his blood work and found his Liver enzymes improved but his anemia still worrisome. Outside of saying that the Denamarin wasn’t really doing anything other than sucking cash out of my wallet, the vet suggested we keep Zeke on the Hepatic diet.

Everything seemed fine until one morning in early September when I awoke to find Zeke trembling on the couch, which was covered in his vomit.
Zeke’s health had totally crashed. He was jaundiced looking, shaking, lethargic, and refusing food or water.

I was convinced he was bitten by a brown recluse spider since I found a huge one our bathroom room that morning. We rushed him to the Pet ER. To read more about that part of Zeke’s health issues, check out this story.

The vets were convinced we only had a few days to a week left of Zeke’s life.

However I refused to believe that and slowly nursed Zeke back to health over the rest of September, October and early November.

Side note: A dog’s recovering from a Brown Recluse spider bite can last anywhere from 8-12 weeks, if that’s what indeed happened to Zeke.

During this time, the vets wanted to perform all kinds of invasive tests and biopsies on him to find the reason for his liver and anemia issues. They thought it could be a GI issue, or cancer, or half a dozen other things other than my mentions of a possible spider bite.

Whatever it was, I decided that it was foolish to put Zeke through a bunch of painful tests if he was possibly at the end of his life. We rescued little Zeke from a kill shelter when he was 2 and since that time have given him a nice full life that he otherwise wouldn’t have had, so we just accepted every extra day of life was a wonderful gift.

I’d rather have my little buddy be comfortable and be surrounded by as much love as I and my wife could give him than have him endure procedures just to satisfy a vet’s curiosity. I also dumped using that Hepatic diet and switched him to wet dog food that was full of gravy and meat. This made Zeke very happy.

In December, we had yet another vet appointment to check Zeke’s condition. The vet performed more blood tests. Zeke was still anemic but now his liver seemed less of a problem since the function was in normal range.

Zeke’s vet, who I started calling “Quincy” since she had a tendency to toss around as many medical conditions as the old Jack Klugman show, had concluded that Zeke had autoimmune hemolytic anemia (IMHA).

She wrote up an estimate for further blood testing to be sure of the diagnosis and also wrote up a treatment plan for Zeke. I told her I’d think about this course of action.

Due to Zeke’s multiple diagnosis being thrown at me from every direction, I was thoroughly confused, perturbed, and worried by it all.

Over late December and January (2026) Zeke’s health seemed to get much better. He was putting on weight, not looking jaundiced, and was starting to return to his usual spit and vinegar attitude.

Even though there were visible improvements, I read further about IMHA and became concerned enough about the disease that I was convinced that Zeke should get those other tests at least for a proper diagnose IMHA. It’s better to know what for sure about his condition in order to be emotionally prepared for what may be in the future. Especially since dogs with this disease have a high probability of dying from a painful heart attack or embolism, things I didn’t want Zeke to experience.

Therefore, last week, I set up the in-office appoint with the vet to test Zeke and discuss his treatment. Zeke was none to happy to be heading to the vet. After all that he’s gone through, he’d now developed a pretty good case of white-coat syndrome.

Even though I tried to ease his worries and calm him as we were at the vet, he still was a shaky, panting mess. Thankfully this visit only involved a simple blood draw and no day-long stay.

We met the vet and discussed his health history. Next, the vet wanted to see how his anemia levels were doing. She took Zeke into the back to draw his blood while I sat in the consultation room. I could hear Zeke’s growls and thought, “Yep, that’s my boy! Little squirmy Tasmanian devil!”

Afterwards Zeke was brought back into the consultation room. Together we waited ten minutes for the blood test results. Zeke paced around the room.

The vet finally came back into the room. She had a look of bafflement on her face.

“Good news, although I’m not sure how, but Zeke no longer shows any signs of anemia or liver disease!”

I was very happily relieved, and also as equally confounded as the doctor as to what the hell had caused all his issues over the last ten months. Food? Drugs? Cancer? Spider Bites? A series of misdiagnosis by incompetent vets?

The vet wouldn’t comment on the latter hypothesis.

But whatever it was that caused this calamity, it was finally over. The old Zeke was back.

Currently, there’s only one thing about Zeke that still concerns my wife and I. I use the word “concerns” but perhaps a better verb would be “offends,” since Zeke now has a habit of letting loose the most foul smelling, room-clearing, eye-watering, what-septic-tank-of-hell-did-that-come-from flatulence that I’ve ever had the displeasure to dip my nose into!

He seems fond of saving it up for nighttime when we’re all sitting on the couch and watching TV.

I’ll be sitting in the middle of the couch. My wife sits on the right of me, and Zeke will be curled up to the left of me. After a few minutes, Zeke bends his head up and looks longingly at me as he turns to offer me his belly for a nice rub. He looks so cute that I can’t help myself but to rub that little dog belly.

That’s when, after I start patting the belly, a slight smile curls on his lips and signals to me that I’ve fallen for his little joke yet again; I’m now pressing down on the devil’s bagpipe which plays the discordant whine—of farts.

I guess it’s a small price to pay to have Zeke back to being healthy.

Although my wife has a quite different opinion about our malodorous pup.

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I wish I could say that’s how this story ends. But unfortunately, 3 days after I made this post, Zeke’s health took a major turn for the worse. His anemia had suddenly gotten worse. We rushed him to his vet, which was a pointless waste of money and time since they basically said, after running a bunch of expensive tests, to “rush him to the Pet ER. They can do a blood transfusion on him.”

No shit Sherlock…er… I mean, Quincy. Tell me something I don’t know.

We got Zeke to the Pet ER. They also did a slew of tests. Unfortunately, they found that his liver was too damaged to come back from, this of course impacted his anemia which made a blood transfusion into a pointless procedure if his liver was too far gone.

So we took Zeke home, made him as comfortable as possible, then set up an at home euthanasia, which took place yesterday morning.

Currently, my wife and I are devastated. That’s as close as I’m ever going to come to having a kid, without the college costs.

After we put Zeke down, and then buried him in a backyard grave that I dug, I got thinking about the cascade of events that led up to this. I know I shouldn’t have and instead should have focused on all the good times we had with Zeke, but I instead let grief evolve into anger.

Angry over what, you say?

I’m angry over the fact that none of the damn vets who we’ve seen over the course of last 7 months, not once did any of them think to run a urine bacteria test on Zeke to see if he was infected with Leptospirosis. I looked over all his health records. Not one test in that regards.

This is a bacterial infection that is widespread in the wet Pacific Northwest. It’s so bad that the Washington State Department of Health has an ongoing warning about it. You’d think that if a dog shows up with symptoms of this infection, that any qualified vet would run tests for the disease. But apparently the slap-dash, incompetent, low-budget, private equity owned numbskulls that we had for vets assumed that Zeke’s yearly inoculation against Lepto would protect him. I guess they never bothered to learn the facts that the shot only covers 4 variations of the bacteria strain.

It would have been better to do a test just to rule it out as a possibility for his anemia, but what do I know I’m just a flunky cartoonist.

It wasn’t until we chatted with the Home Euthanasia vet, who relayed her experience with leptospirosis, that we saw the obvious Occam’s Razor of Zeke’s health issue. Sadly, by then it was far too late to do anything since he was too far gone and the grim reaper had arrived on the scene.

Overall, this experience has taught me two important life lessons.

First, do your research and find a qualified vet, that isn’t some schmoe factory set up as a money scam by a private equity firm. (I’m looking at you, Banfield Pet Hospital).

Next, appreciate, enjoy, and love every moment you have with your special furry friend (or any other loved one for that matter) since you never know when they’ll head off to that great dog park in the sky.

Love you, Zeke. You were the best puppy ever.

To see that year of Zeke’s life in photos go here.