Who's behind DoggieResearch.com? (AKA the About Me page)

My name is Marianne Lower.  "Lower" rhymes with flower and power, and if you keep saying it wrong, it also rhymes with glower.  It does not rhyme with mower or grower.  

As you can see from the picture, I am a dachshund mom, and have been since 1994, when I got the red head in the picture below.  But this blog is intended to be helpful to all doggie moms and doggie dads, no matter what size the doggie is.

Around about the turn of the century (the recent one), when the red head was 6 years old and I was... well, we won't go there, but, both of our healths went to hell at the same time.  I ended up in the hospital with complications from having Crohn's Disease (which had been undiagnosed up to then), and Penny got a muscle infection in the big muscle that went from the top of her skull to the bottom of her jaw, called Masticatory Muscle Myositis, and as good a layman explanation as any can be found here.  (I've also included a copy of the article in the DoggieResearch.com Document Library.)  She couldn't open her mouth to eat or drink, but I didn't know that because I was in the hospital, and my husband thought she was just being termpermental.

We both survived.  Well, at least I am surviving still.  Penny lived another 11 years and passed on last June (2011) of old age and complications brought on from living with Cushings Disease for about 8 years.

It always feels a little 'Twilight Zonish', that in a bizarre twist of fate that August of the year 2000, both Penny and I were brought down with auto-immune response health issues.

Five months after she had recovered from the MMM as it is referred to (for Masticatory Muscle Myositis), I noticed a pea sized lump on her neck under her chin slightly on the right side, (same side as the MMM infection).  I took her to the vet and he wanted to do surgery.  He said it was necessary. Without hesitation, I agreed and she went under the knife to get the tumor taken out.  Pathology indicated it was an unknown mass, but was benign.  The vet said he was not able to get all of it, as it had grown near the jugular and it was too dangerous to try to remove that part.  

At this time in my doggie research life, I wasn't doing any doggie research. So this was before the beginning.

 I never questioned the experts or authority figures, and I believed everything they said without doing any research on my own.  I bought the dog food my vet clinic sold.  I got shots every year because the vet said to.  I did a lot of things 'experts' said to do, that I have since found out were not in the best interests of my dogs health, or my pocket book.  So part of this blog is to try and help people understand that that there is a lot to be understood about taking care of your dogs health, and that it is possible to do so utilizing the best of traditional medicine as well as holistic or natural medicine.  But it does take a lot of research, or at least some research.  However much time you can afford to spend on it.  And it takes finding a veterinarian who is willing to be a partner in the health care management of you canine friend, not a dictator.  I hope by sharing my research thoughts, activities, and experiences, I can assist you in finding the knowledge you seek to better understand and help your own canine best friend.

If you really have a lot of time on your hands, click here for more of the story... (er... click there as soon as I get it up.  There is so much to do on a website!)