Muddle was born on February 4th 1995.  In fact,  he was born right where I am sitting now,  in the alcove of my lounge - now my computer corner but then, a whelping area for the one and only litter of pups I have bred. 

 He was in a muddle from the moment he was born,  first of 10 pups whose mother and father were both my dogs (little accident 9 weeks earlier!). His umbilical cord ruptured and he hemorrhaged badly but I managed to tie it off with some cotton thread and everything seemed OK.

I decided to keep one pup from the litter and it had to be Muddle because he was a shorter coated version of his Dad,  Timba. The muddles continued,  at 10 weeks,  he was playing with my other dogs in the lounge when he fell from an armchair and broke one of his hind legs. All healed well and he started Obedience Training and competing in Obedience competitions at the age of about 12 months. He did pretty well too and I was hopeful of taking him right to the top of the sport - Crufts National Obedience Championships. However, fate took another turn. 

I left Muddle one day in early 1999,  together with his father in a room in my house while I went out for a couple of hours.  When I returned, he was completely lame on his RF leg and it was obvious that Muddle and Timba had had a fight.  I gave him arnica and washed the bite wounds at either side of the his leg  just below the elbow thoroughly and next morning as he was still lame,  I took him to the vet who put him on anti-inflammatories and antibiotics. He seemed to recover after a week or two but soon went very lame again.  Xrays showed that he had osteomyelitis, infection in the bones of his forearm - the radius & ulna. There followed an extended course of treatment and again, he seemed to be cured.

After a about 6 months, I realized that he was not working with the same enthusiasm as before and more Xrays showed that the infection was still there along with inflammation of the periosteum. More antibiotics and then, when this didn't seem to work, a referral to an orthopedic surgeon. To cut a long story short, the surgeon operated on Muddle twice,  to remove overgrowths of bone on the radius & ulna which had become fused together and secondly to remove the ulna bone entirely. His leg remained painful and unstable and I finally realized that the only way to get Muddle pain free would be amputation. I didn't have as much problem with this as some people might because I already have an older dog,  Hurri,  who had also had a very similar problem (different cause) and had lost HIS RF leg in 1995!! 

To cut this rather long story a bit shorter,  the amputation has been a complete success and Muddle has stayed very well until early this year - 2002.

 Muddle started to lose weight and produce extremely copious amounts of faeces which, although not diarrhea in the normal sense of the word,  were still not normal and of a soft constituency. When this continued I took him to see our primary vet,  Belinda (who has looked after Muddle through all his troubles). She suggested taking a sample and in the meanwhile put him on probiotic powders.  The sample came back as "abnormal and likely to benefit from probiotic therapy" so we thought we were doing all that was necessary.

Over the next couple of weeks,  Muddle starting needing to pass a motion every couple of hours,  day & night.  Back to the vet and bloods were sent to the Royal Vet College at Potters Bar (England). We were hoping that these would reveal that Muddle had something easily treated such as pancreatic insufficiency. This was not to be though and Belinda decided that the only way to get a diagnosis was to refer Muddle to the RVC for endoscopy and biopsies.

This first appointment was on May 21st 2002 and we saw the Internal Medicine Intern at the RVC,  Peter Chapman. They kept Muddle in for several days and the results came back as Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Lymphangiectasia. The type of IBD Muddle has is similar to Crohn's Disease in people. At first I was relieved because the alternative was to my mind far worse -  cancer.   Now I am not so sure that relief was justified.