Help Boris With His Surgery

Over the past month, I noticed that Boris' breathing has become raspier, and he tends to hack up food more while eating. His breath is also quite a bit noisier, which was never a problem for him.

On a visit to the vet, he was diagnosed with laryngeal paralysis. It is a condition that comes along later in age (Boris is 10) and is the first stage of a neurological disease similar to ALS in humans. Thankfully, that is slow-moving and not a concern until well down the road.

What is an issue now is paralysis, which is caused when the abductor muscles in the larynx are not working properly and not expanding and opening for a deep breath. As a result, the laryngeal folds flop weakly instead. This can cause anxiety, which causes more anxious breathing, which exasperates the problem.

In some cases, this can cause a partial obstruction in the larynx by the flap, which leads to an emergency condition and death if the dog goes too long unable to breathe properly.

In some cases, dogs live only a few months, but in most, it is 1-3 years.

With surgery, the dog can get a couple of extra years.

So that is where we are now. The surgery is about $6,600. He is scheduled to go in on Sept. 2. It won't cure the condition, but it will make death by suffocation less likely, and it will give me a few more years on this planet with my pup.