Pooch pacemaker puts pug in the pink

The dog's owner pays $4,200, but says it's worth twice the price.

By Tamara El-Khoury, Times Staff Writer
Published February 15, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Keri Wiginton | Times] Debbie Muldowney hugs her 10-year-old pug, Nike, so named because of a penchant for chewing up shoes.

LAND O'LAKES - When Nike the pug was a few weeks old, he was diagnosed with a heart murmur. A veterinarian recommended he be euthanized.

But Debbie Muldowney had already fallen in love with the dog she named after the several pairs of shoes he chewed.

Ten years later, Muldowney found herself fighting for Nike again.

Last month, his neck was swollen, he was lethargic and he was gasping for breath.

Nike's vet sent him to Florida Veterinary Specialists in Tampa. The diagnosis: a degenerative heart problem. They gave Muldowney and her husband, Timothy, two choices:

- Take Nike home to die.

- Spend thousands of dollars on a pacemaker.

"I was so dumbfounded," Muldowney said. "A pacemaker for a dog?"

A $4,200 pacemaker for a 10-year-old dog?

Nike's hourlong surgery was Jan. 20. Today, he's acting like a puppy.

"To see him the way he is now," said Muldowney, a homemaker and mother of a teenage son, "I would have paid double that."

She said her husband told her "nothing better happen to him after this. I have a lot invested in him."

The Muldowneys aren't the only pet owners buying doggie pacemakers. Every year nationwide, 300 to 400 dogs get pacemakers to treat heart conditions.

The gap is closing between human and veterinary medicine, said Dr. Alan Spier, the veterinarian cardiologist who operated on Nike. Before the surgery, Nike had weeks, maybe months, to live. Now he can live out a pug's normal lifespan, an average of 10 to 12 years.

In other words, they might have bought him only a couple more years.

That's the dilemma. Dogs his age are more likely to need pacemakers or other costly medical procedures than younger pets.

But age is just a number, Spier said.

"One of the things we always say is age is not a disease," he said. "Just because the animal is older doesn't necessarily mean that's a reason not to do something."

Dogs were getting pacemakers 10 years ago, Spier said, but the technology is improving and becoming more available.

And as more people identify their pets as family members, more are choosing costly procedures for them. Spier said sonograms, CAT scans and orthopedic implants like hip replacements are becoming more common.

Since the surgery, Nike is sleeping in a baby crib to keep him from jumping. He's up to his old antics. Wednesday morning he grabbed a wad of toilet paper from the trash and ran around the house with it.

"Nike, do you want a treat?" Debbie Muldowney asked.

He dropped the trash.

"I had people go to me, 'What are you, insane? I never would have put that kind of money into a dog,' " she said. "But I said, 'Well, you know what? This is how I am.' "

Tamara El-Khoury can be reached at 727 445-4181 or tel-khoury@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 14, 2008, 21:49:41]