The Disease and My Snuggle Puggle

Eduardo's Mommy Here:

I've been crying a lot lately, every time I see my sweet snuggle puggle(which is every time I look down) I break down and sob. When I hold him like a baby and stroke his face I cry and don't even realize it. He tries so hard to kiss the tears away but it only makes me cry harder. You see, we thought Eduardo had TMJ and that we would be treating him with an anti inflammatory for the rest of his life for the pain. Well long story short my husband & I decided to take Eduardo to a highly recommended vet for a second opinion because Eduardo was still in unbearable pain most days.

Yesterday, Eduardo was diagnosed with Eosinophilic Myositis. Eduardo's immune system is attacking his Masticatory Muscles causing them to be inflamed. See the Masticatory Muscles are made up of 2M muscles fibers, no other muscles have these unique molecular structure. When a dog gets Eosinophilic Myositis the immune system targets their "chewing muscles" for some unknown reason. This makes the muscles weak and in my personal opinion completely useless.

Eduardo can only open his mouth about the size of puppy kibble, when he yawns (something I gave him his first treatment of steroids yesterday and because yesterday his muscles were inflamed(which causing swelling) I wasn't prepared to see just how bad his Eosinophilic Myositis really was.

I want to show you some pictures, kinda like before & after:

His temples were always more sunk in than most dogs, but we thought that was normal.

Today I took some pictures:

See in the before picture his face was inflamed & swollen, so when we started the steroid treatment the swelling went down. Making his face look a little "hollow".

The vet says eventually he will not be able to open his mouth. Then we will place him on a liquid diet. I'm not crying because of that, I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I'm crying because my love is hurting. No matter how much he tries to keep it from me I see it in his little puggle eyes. Every time he eats I hear him gasping for air because he mostly swallows his food, instead of chewing, because of the pain. I cry because I couldn't prevent this!

But I swear on everything I will make it better. I know I haven't been blogging much but the blog is going to take a backseat for a little bit. Please everyone just bear with us. Snuggle with your loves(persons and fursons!) as often as you can! And if you have a moment, could you send some goodvibes? Some sites I read said with treatment dogs can regain full movement back in their jaws. That's what we're praying for. Eduardo is already down to 20% working, the rest is damaged and we want so bad for this treatment to make this muscles healthy again!

We love y'all!

Eduardo the Snuggle Puggle's Mommy

Ana