Coonhound Paralysis

This blog talks about our experience when Goya (our 150lb English Mastiff) came down with coonhound paralysis (also called acute idiopathic polyradiculoneuritis).

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Progression of Disease and Recovery

Emmit is a 6-yr-old black Lab recently diagnosed with coonhound paralysis. So far, he became fully paralyzed quickly, was back walking (shakily) at about day 4, and then at day 7 got worse again.

Emmit's dad asks:
Can anyone provide insight into the typical progress? It seems to be two steps forward and one step back... Is this typical? I hear a lot about steady but slow progrees. We had pretty rapid progress, and BAM! it all went sideways... Any insights would be helpful...

My Goya certainly did the "normal" get worse until hitting the bottom, then make slow but steady progress (no back-sliding) until he was recovered (about 8 months). I have not read anything to the contrary in my reading on the web.

The timeline of Goya's first bout is in Gary's post on 28mar2006 "Details of first bout with coonhound paralysis", with some longer-term history in our post on 27mar2006 "Overview of Goya's History". The whole blog is the timeline of the rest of his disease and recovery the second time he had it.

Can everyone with experience with this disease please tell us the course of weakening, paralysis, and recovery as comments to this post, so we can collect as examples here as possible?

Thanks, Bonnie