Tayfun is born on 20-8-97.
We are so proud of our beautiful black puppy.
The first little problem occurs when he is still pretty young.
In the daytime he is a doll but at night he cries the whole night long.
Tay is 6 months old when he sits next to me on the couch
and without any warning bites me in my face.

We visit a behavior counselor/veterinarian who prescribes Selgian.
It's a medicine that helps him to be less afraid and to cope
better with new situations. It works! And after two months Tay
is a puppy without problems. He's really self assured.
He develops to an incredible Afghan of 2
years with a long, and exceptional amount of coat.

From that moment on some really strange things were
becoming visible. Very slowly.......but they are there.
When he's 2.5 years old, he has become fat and he doesn't
play like he used to do. Even after different food and less eating
he doesn't lose the weight. His coat starts to shed very slowly.
So slow that we don't even notice it. And because experienced people
tell us it's normal to shed coat gradually. He changes from
a ski-outfit to a race-suit. But when we are at shows the questions
start coming : Is something wrong with him?

In Feb/Mar 2000 we have to admit that something must
be wrong with Tay. Now smelly spots appear under his belly
and on the rest of his skin. These spots just won't heal.
Tay always coughs after he drinks and the coat that was
left loses pigment. It feels like goathair.The veterinarian has no idea,
so we started a search for answers on the internet.

The golden clue came from someone that works with the Grandeurs-kennel in America:

Test him on Hypothyroid

Because I didn't know the disease, I carefully check with my veterinarian so I wouldn't come off like a fool.

His reaction is positive. A lot of dogs from alot of different breeds seem to carry this disease with them.

So we draw blood from him., sent it to the lab and one week later we knew for sure. Tay's T4-level was dramatically low.

From the end of April 2000 he gets L.Thoroxine.
We start with a normal dose and Tay is checked again every 6 weeks.
He begins to feel better, and by the time the dose is adjusted to Tay he begins to play with the other dogs.
This is in July 2000.
He eats more than before and gets back his normal figure. The skin under his belly doesn't smell anymore and heals.
And the most remarkable is that his coat starts to grow back and feels healthy after some time.

We're going the right way now.

Tay was climbing out of the well back up! And now we're thinking about signing him up for another show.

Apr/May 2001: Strange, we start to find more and more hair in the brush.
And we're seeing more and more entangled hair.He begins to eat and play less.
All of a sudden he seems to have problems coping with
stressful situations. So: back to the vet. His thyroid gets tested.
That works fine with the dose of L. Thoroxine he's been
getting since last year. A full picture of his blood came
out o.k. as well according to the vet. He tells us that he
can't help us anymore.

We get advice from our homeopathic vet somewhere
else in the Netherlands. He examines Tay and asks us
totally different questions than the normal vet did.

Yes, Tay seems to be more stressed out, is more easily frightened
and sometimes he pees in the house. That's something he didn't do before.
The blood is examined again and Tay's kidneys doesn't seem to
work as well as they should. We start homeopathy and
give him a kidney-diet besides his normal dose of
L. Thyroxine.

In July 2001 we take Tay along with us to a show.
He got into a panic in the ring and in the car on the way
back he attacks his best buddy Biju.

This wasn't the Tay as we knew him.

And there we went again: to the homeopathic vet. Blood is checked but it doesn't give a different picture.
The homeopathic medicines are adjusted and new are added.
This continues to the mid of August of 2001.
Tay sleeps a lot, and begins to lose more and more hair again. He gets
fat and we were hoping for a positive turn in this situation.

Then 11 August : Tay lies on the couch and suddenly begins to scream terribly. He can't get up
now and panics. When I sit down next to him I see something awful. The left side of his skull
was pounding like it was going to blow. I try to calm him down but he doesn't seem to notice me.
Advice from the vet : leave him alone and close all curtains, so the room is dark.
The next two days this ritual repeats itself but fortunately after some rest he
seems to regroup himself everytime. Straight after the weekend we take him to the vet again.
He notices the pounding himself. There are three possible diagnosis's:

-an infection
-a brain tumor
-or he's epileptic

The vet thinks Tay is epileptic. With the right hom. medicines we take him home again.

But nothing seems to work anymore.
Tay gets obsessed by food. He has seizures and after every seizure he seems to recover less.
He gets so confused that he bites us without any reason. He begins to
sleep more and more restlessly and he doesn't get near to the other dogs.

We're powerless.
Advised by the internist we give Tay a last possible remedy ; three weeks long
Phenobarbital (epilepsy medicine). Tay turns into a zombie that just sleeps,
gets scared and as a reaction on that, bites.

It's now 20 October.

We give up the struggle. Tay deserves his peace.
On 24-10-2001 we let Tayfun go
(the sweetest and most beautiful dog on this earth)
at the unfair age of 4 years.

Tayfun..... you are in our hearts for ever!

Note: Since Tayfun died we realized that maybe lots of the problems Tay
had could have been connected with his vaccinations. After his puppy jabs we repeated vaccinations
(included rabies) every year. After the jabs he received 2 years old his low thyroid was discovered.
None of the vets ever warned us to stop vaccinating him. 2 months after his last jabs,
he was almost 4 years old then, he developed the cluster epilepsy
that changed his life into an unworthy nightmare,
from which we had to relieve him.

copyright (c) 2005-Show Dog Designs