About three to four months of age he started having what can only be described as fits. As these usually happened every night around 2 in the morning, he always sleeps in my bedroom. He would wake barking at his rear end, race around, stopping at walls and cupboards and just bark at them. He is very hyperactive at these times. The far away look in his eyes makes it impossible to gain his visual attention in the hope of distracting him. In my boy's case he does not have many physical symptoms, they are almost all neurological. It was suggested to me at this time, by the breeder of my boy's dam that it could be a digestive disturbance and to change his time of feeding. The Vet said it could be but they had never experienced it in a dog before and still felt the cause of the pain was in his rear end.

When he was 18 months old we took him to our new vet as we had moved. He was diagnosed as having Hip Dysplasia and Castration was advised to calm him down a bit prior to hip surgery. Subsequently one hip was operated on. The fits continued, only since the castration they had become aggressive. He had an eye ulcer, so bad that his eye had to be stitched on three occasions. This was followed by severe vomiting, in retrospect it may well have been the anaesthetic that caused this. He became so ill we almost lost him. As the Vets were beginning to have doubts that all his problems were from his hips, he spent a week at the Vets, firstly to aid his recovery but also for observation, blood tests, etc. Because he had not eaten for 3 days all the blood tests came back clear. They therefore concluded, yes he was ill, but he was also a very clever dog who fooled them as they had never been fooled before, as they could not, with any certainty, define what was wrong with him. It was therefore decided to go ahead and operate on his other hip.

He was terrible after the second hip operation – suffice to say I wouldn't want any dog to go through what he went through. We have since been told by Cambridge Veterinary College that anaesthetic is the worst thing for Liver Shunt and that we were lucky not to have lost him.

It was after the last hip operation that the breeder of my boy's dam rang and asked me to read an article about Liver Shunt in that week's Dog World. The symptoms described were very like those suffered by my boy. The edition was 3.4.92. The article was written by Frank Edwards. I rang my vet first thing the following morning and spoke to one of the senior partners who had not dealt with my boy's problems much up to this point, although he had seen him for the odd injection, etc. Fortunately he was prepared to listen to what I had to say and was very open minded. I do feel that a couple of the other vets were rather sceptical about my theories and I would urge anyone who feels that their dogs are displaying any of the symptoms that I have described, to ask their vet to do bile acid tests. My vet came out that morning and took blood for testing. He also witnessed one of my boy's aggressive attacks and at last I felt that someone could actually understand what he could be like. The test proved that with a high bile acid count Liver Shunt was a possibility. He therefore referred him to the Veterinary College at Cambridge University.

At the age of 2 years 6 months, my boy was diagnosed by Cambridge Veterinary College as having Liver Shunt. Basically this is a shunt or vein of blood that goes either through the liver (intra-hepatic) or around the liver (extra-hepatic) without being cleaned of ammonia and toxic waste. The symptoms can and do manifest themselves in many ways, both physically and neurologically, repeated vomiting & diarrhoea, etc. Cambridge said at the time of my consultation they had two dogs in that had been referred to them as having anaemia and hydrocephalus (water on the brain), both proved to have Liver Shunt as well. Cambridge also said there are far too many factors involved to be able to prove or disprove whether or not it is hereditary.

The symptoms I have described were apparently classic to Liver Shunt dogs. When they gave him a mild sedative prior to investigation x-rays and ultrasound it knocked him out completely for hours, they told me that it was a fraction of the amount usually given to a dog of his size and this was another symptom of a shunt. They felt he would benefit from surgery to close the shunt, as from the ultrasound, etc. they thought it was an extra-hepatic (around the liver). Sadly when they operated it proved to be an intra-hepatic shunt, complicated and inoperable.