We started Harry on Selegiline. In dogs, the drug is indicated to treat Cushings disease, but also has shown efficacy in treating symptoms of dementia. Or canine cognitive disorder. Or whine whine whine, it’s 4:30 am, would somebody please get out of bed come downstairs and let me outside. And then a half hour later let me back in?
Could take up to a month for the effect to be observed. How does it work? In the brain, Selegiline inhibits an enzyme that breaks down dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter required for proper communication (“signaling”) between neurons. (Kid’s still got it!). Inhibiting the enzyme that breaks down dopamine means there’s more dopamine left swirling around in Harry’s wetware, which means longer periods of proper neuronal signalling, which means — at least two sleep-deprived adoptive Uprights hope it means! — improved continuity of sleep for Harry At Night. And in turn the Uprights.
Even more so than in the hard sciences, in biology there is theory and there is practice. If you know what I mean. So now, we wait.
No, that’s not the light of the camera flash. The light is coming from inside him — flashes from the incessant electrical storm occurring inside his little canine brain. Emphasis little. What? I’m not kidding. I mean really, think about it, how big a brain does a pampered pooch need to get safely through his day? It’s not like he needs to scrounge in the wild to find his own food, fend off competitors and do the whole survival of the fittest crap. No. We buy his food for him. And then Happy Wife mixes it with something irresistibly tasty, like microwaved beef, or left over gravy from the Swedish meatballs, then she gets on her knees and hand feeds it to him. He doesn’t need to search for a safe place to sleep like other animals. No. We have dog beds on the floor for him to choose from, in different shapes and colors, and if either one doesn’t suit His Finickiness, well, there’s always the $700 arm chair. When he’s done with the food and poops out what’s left we pick it up by hand. After, of course, placing over the hand a plastic grocery bag, one you hope doesn’t have holes in it, plus, when necessary, kicking the little brown-black poohs to dislodge them from the frozen snow. I find that if you do that while wearing a soft-toed boot you can actually bruise a toe those buggers are frozen in so hard sometimes. As often as not we walk him on leash so he doesn’t wander off aimlessly into the woods like a demented old man who up and leaves the house when left unattended. Beyond its support for basic physiological functions, mainly eating and poohing, you wonder why Harry needs a brain at all anymore.
Once I start my new job (soon) Harry will no longer have the benefit of me being his daytime babysitter. So a woman named Desiree is stopping by Friday morning to “interview” us, and presumably Harry as well, to see if she will agree to stop by once or twice daily to attend to his needs. Desiree runs a pet sitting company here in town. We figure human contact once or twice a day oughta do it. That plus the Selegiline, to keep the “sky” in Harry’s little brain storm free, so that by the time Happy Wife and I arrive home from work, and later go to bed, he’s not still snappin’ & cracklin’ up there, if you know what I mean.