to help ensure a healthy future for the breed.

Al-Li was joyful, gentle and full of life. Everyone loved her. Sometime after her twelfth birthday she started to have trouble with one of her back legs. She started to limp. Nothing showed up on x-rays. Gradually, it worsened. More tests were done, including an MRI, again nothing showed up. The weakness progressed and finally the neurologist, after eliminating everything else, diagnosed her as having DM (Degenerative Myelopathy). They said there was no cure. There was no hope. I wasn’t ready to give up and started taking her for physical therapy. She had twice a week water treadmill exercises to build up her muscles. A custom doggie wheelchair was made for her. Gradually though this insidious disease robbed her little body of its strength. When she could no longer walk in her cart, when she could no longer pull her self around, I knew it was time. She was 14 years old, bright and alert and trapped in a body that wouldn’t respond to her. Finally out of love I let her go. The TTHWF funding that is helping to research stem cell treatments might very well find a cure for diseases such as NCL and DM. After watching these two devastating illnesses cause terrible suffering in dogs that I loved, I cannot say enough about how important this medical research is. As both CCL or NCL and DM have matching human illnesses, it is our chance to try and stop these diseases before they cause more suffering and claim more lives.

Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis
Bai-Lee started life as a happy, bright, normal Tibetan Terrier. When she was born in 1996, we had never heard of NCL or CCL.  Her parents were both healthy. Bai-Lee lived with my friends just a few miles from me and I saw her often. As she got older, she seemed a bit more nervous and started to have some problems walking. She was taken to a variety of specialists and all possible tests were done to determine what was causing the weakness and change in personality. Some mentioned CCL, some did not.  Everything humanely possible was done to help her. However, this happy girl became progressively more frightened of everything and withdrew into herself. She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t interact with anyone. She lost total control. Finally, when she could no longer recognize any of us, when her life consisted of only her unknown inner terrors, she was allowed to go to her rest and to find peace. She was only 8 years old. Watching her 2 year descent was a painful experience.  Bai-Lee gave us one last gift; we like to think that research garnered from her medical tests went to help save other Tibetans from suffering as she had suffered. Thanks to the research that the donations to the TTHWF are helping to fund, perhaps in the future we can prevent other dogs from descending into the hell little Bai-Lee went through.

by Victoria White