Welcome to Mad Fox Designs

Mad Fox Silver Hunter, CGC - "Hunter"
(D and L's Silver Chance x D and L's Silver Annie)

Hunter is a male Weimaraner that I acquired from a family living in luxury on Lake George in New York. He, however, was not enjoying the same luxury as his "family" - he was put in a crate at 8pm each night, let out at 5am, to potty, was fed his daily meal, and crated again at 6am, until 7pm, or whenever the family decided to let him out again. "If he wasn't making too much of a fuss, we just left him there for a bit." With some basic math, you can figure out that he spent only about 2 hours per day out of his crate!! This went on for SIX years, until their daughter and her precosious young son needed to move in with them. Then they decided they didn't have the time to give him the attention he was accustomed to. Really? They could no longer give their dog the two hours he was used to being out of his crate? I answered their ad on Petfinder, and went to visit him. At first I just wasn't sure. He wasn't quite right, not what I expected of a Weimaraner. But the more I listened to their story, the more I knew that this dog needed an out, and I was it.

Hunter required extensive retraining. Including learning how to be out of a crate!! When we'd let him out, he went absolutely crazy, trying to see and smell and do everything all at once! He had no idea what a dog bed was, or toys. His experience had only included a small blanket thrown in the corner of his crate, and a red Kong, that he got so bored he chewed the top off! Two of them!! He needed to learn how to be around people, other dogs, cats. How to settle down and chill out in the house. He also needed to lose some weight! Quite frankly, he was a sausage with a head!!! Long daily walks helped with several aspects of his retraining. In addition to reduced food, to the amount required for the weight he was supposed to be, the walks helped to take the weight off of him rapidly. They also helped with his energy level, so that working with him in other areas of his training was easier, and he was more able to focus on what we were working on, rather than feeling the need to do everything at once. Eventually he spent less and less time in the crate, until, these days, the only time he's in the crate is long enough to eat his dinner, in the truck, or if we'll be out for a particularly extended amount of time.

We had one persistent issue pop up as he learned about living with us, and that there were things he could use freely, like the beds and the toys - he became a little aggressive over possesions. This is a continuing battle, but we can usually find ways around it.

A year after I took him away from his previous home, and after spending a great deal of time and energy working to rehabilitate him into a sane family member, we attended obedience class at Dogs-R-Us in Johnstown, NY. The instructor, Sylvia Carley, often used Hunter and I to demonstrate the behavior she was looking to teach the other students. We actually went through twice, to firm things up before taking the AKC's Canine Good Citizen test in August 2009. He was a star pupil, and went on to pass the CGC with flying colors! He repeated his pass a few weeks later when he retook it with the additional requirements to become eligible to be a Therapy Dog with Therapy Dog International. He had become such a good dog, even my mom likes him, despite the fact that she's terrified of dogs!

Scarcely a month later, Hunter began a new journey - training to be a tracking Search & Rescue K-9! As with everything else I'd asked of this dog, he was willing and very capable. We worked with John Rice, who is well known for his seminars on the subject. Hunter picked it up extremely quickly and was doing some very nice tracks in very short order. In January, 2010, we started going to agility classes at Jazz Agility in Greenfield, NY. The idea was to increase our bond, and work on both of our fitness and confidence levels for whatever obstacles might crop up on a search. What a fun time!! As always, he showed willingness and heart in this pursuit. We were getting ready to start our certification testing to become a K9-SAR unit, well ahead of schedule. He was doing very well in agility, and I'd started thinking of competing. We were on track to do and be everything I felt we were capable of being, as a team, partners. Search, agility... anything we wanted to do was at our feet.

In May, 2010, Hunter began to refuse jumps. Even some lower ones. I chalked it up to me putting too much pressure on him to perform. In June, 2010, he started to limp. He tested positive for Lyme's Disease.

We ran him through the course of Doxy, and he actually seemed to get worse. The limp became a gait abnormality - instead of walking with left front, right back, right front, left back, his gait became same sided. Both legs of the same side would move forward at the same time. It looks really awkward. His stance became guarded. He tripped more easily. His promising future in agility and as a SAR K9 evaporated.

We spent time at the vet's office at least once a month for a while. His first vet took x-rays of his spine and declared it was spondylosis, and gave him a steriod injection (without consulting me first, I might add).

It had no effect. Hunter's previously well defined muscles atrophied, giving him a bit of a skeletal appearance. His hair became thin. In the blink of an eye, he became an old man. I took him and his x-rays for a second opinion to Dr. Chris Elson at Burnt Hills Veterinary Hospital, and he said the spondylosis wasn't nearly extensive enough to be causing the problems we were seeing. We were stumped. There was no apparent reason for what we were seeing. We tried supplements. We tried diet. We tried acupuncture and acupressure. They seemed to give some relief, but not much. As time progressed I started to notice some personality changes, and some cognitive dysfunction. Some days I wasn't sure if he was able to hear me. Other days I wasn't sure he could see. But still other days those functions seemed normal. A couple of days before Thanksgiving, 2011, a friend asked if his eyes were cloudy.

I used my EMT pen light to check and got a bone chilling shock - Hunter's pupils were dilated and nonreactive. I'm an EMT, and I know that that is Not Good ™. Burnt Hills squeezed him in for an urgent visit the next day - the day before Thanksgiving. His pupils were still dilated and nonreactive. Dr. Elson's face and lack of words said it all. There are only a couple of things that cause pupillary nonreaction - one is a relatively rare nerve disease, and the other is intracranial pressure. The most common, and put together with all of the symptoms we had seen from him up to this point, the most likely, cause of intracranial pressure is a lesion in or on his brain. Dr. Elson conferred with a veterinary neurologist on Hunter's condition, and he was in full agreement. With the signs and symptoms, the location of the tumor is suspected to be in the forebrain/cerebellar region of the brain.

Short of costly surgery, there is nothing we can do. And even the surgery would only gain us a short amount of time. So we wait, facing an uncertain future. Will he be here a week from now? A month? Two, or three? Will he be gone in the morning when I wake? The tears flow, sometimes without warning, and unbidden. But mostly, I choose to rejoice in each day we get through together. Every morning that I wake up to see him looking at me, waiting impatiently for me to get out of bed to take him outside, is another reason to smile. We live each day. There will be time for mourning when he is no longer here for that to be a waste of his precious little time. Not every day can be made special, but on days when I can, I take him to do things. We went to a friend's house, who helps me train Tinker, and released some pigeons for him to chase and point, to have a chance to be a bird dog for an afternoon. He got his photo taken with Santa this year, as he did the year he had started with SAR. He went with me to a holiday party for Search Team 5-1, his last team event, and was recognized for his hard work in training to be a SAR K9. He went with us to my folks' house to celebrate Christmas. And then... who knows. We'll take each day as we get them, extending his story as far as it can go. And then his memory and teachings will continue on well after his physical form departs.