(This isn't as serious as the title sounds, but we mainly only know that because of the benefit of hindsight - getting the diagnoses for each was kind of dramatic.)
We have two dogs, Wrigley and Luke. Wrigley is four and a half years old, and Luke just turned two years old.
Over the past six months, they've both been diagnosed with some very relatable issues that they needed medication for...
In October 2021, Luke had a series of nights where he would shake violently, and/or vomit. He would also do the "praying pose" a lot, where he lowered his chest to the ground but kept his hips in the air.
When you Google that pose for a dog, the results are kind of scary; it usually means he's in pain and is trying to relieve it. Common causes are a stomach ache, or potentially pancreatitis (which also has the vomiting symptom).
We took him to the emergency vet twice in a week, both very late at night. But nothing terribly wrong was discovered with him, so he essentially seemed fine. But eventually they figured out what his condition was...
Luke has acid reflux.
So, they prescribed him with a few medications, which he still takes today. One of them is omeprazole, which is the same kind of medicine Mike takes before he eats pizza because the red sauce hurts his heart.
However, that wasn't the only issue he was wrestling with. See, the shaking was from anxiety, and thanks to the endless waves of delivery men who brought packages to the house leading up to our wedding... Luke now has a fear of boxes and trucks. He tries to run the other way whenever he sees a truck while walking, and he tried to hide from boxes.
Oh, and by the way, we are in the middle of remodeling our kitchen, and we had to put a bunch of boxes in our room. So, unsurprisingly, he got hit with another wave of anxiety.
We took him to the doctor, who prescribed an anxiety medicine we can give him on the stressful days - it mellows him out and makes him very sleepy. We mainly used it early on, when the kitchen was being demolished. Since then, we have only used it on days when nobody will be home to hang out with them AND there are kitchen construction sounds coming through the door. Thankfully, this doesn't happen too often, as we've been trying to make sure someone is home with them to keep them calm during the construction times.
But perhaps his older brother, Wrigley, was feeling left out... or maybe it was just his turn.
Because almost as soon as we had gotten Luke's anxiety medicine, Wrigley started yelping when someone touched his right ear, or even touched his head near the ear. It didn't happen every time, but happened often enough that we knew there was something going on with his ear.
We took him to the vet, and it turns out he has a severe ear infection - it was so bad, the ear was too swollen to get a Q-tip in. He got some medicine to take down the swelling, and a follow-up appointment for two weeks later so the ear could properly be treated.
We also discovered he had an eye infection, and got some medicine for that as well. Luke likes to lick his brother's face, so our household is split on whether the licks caused the eye infection, or whether Luke was trying to heal his brother's eye infection by licking it.
Fortunately, our dogs are otherwise healthy, but it is very strange to see them experiencing such... human issues. Maybe it's because we're getting older, but we both have medicines we take every day, and it's wild to watch our dogs get to that point as well, even one as young as Luke.
Our pets truly are reflections of us, aren't they?