Jack has Syringomyelia (SM)

This is bad news. Really bad news. So bad, it almost couldn’t be worse. Basically, this is a disease where the skull is too small for the brain, and so the brain starts squeezing out the hole in the skull near the brain stem. That’s where the cerebellum is located. The cerebellum is responsible for basic motor skills. As you can imagine, it affects the central nervous system and causes a lot of pain. You can read about it here: http://www.cavalierhealth.org/syringomyelia.htm

He’s exhibited symptoms of the disease ever since we got him. He’s always randomly started yelping, but that was rare and occasional. Now it’s frequent when he walks around. When he’s on a lead, he’ll start “air scratching” at himself. He obsessively licks and nips at himself, which we thought was an allergy. He yawns a lot. Turns out that’s because it relieves some of the pressure. He likes to sleep with his head elevated. Same thing.

He became markedly worse on Sunday when were up at Mary Ann’s parents’ house in Marin. Instead of running around the yard like normally loves to do, he would run a few feet and then start yelping like you stepped on him. Weird. Then he was fine for a while. Then he did it again. MA brought him to the vet on Monday, who thought it was a sprained back. It’s a pretty rare disease, and it turns out that this is the normal diagnosis. He’s only 5 months old, so that didn’t add up to MA, so she started doing research. That’s when she found out about SM. Jack exhibits every sign in the book. We went to the neurologist on Tue morning, and he sent us to the pet MRI today (Wed). The MRI confirmed what we knew. He has this, and it’s a really bad case. Normally, signs show up in dogs (60-70% of all cases are Cavaliers) 2+ years old. Jack is 5 months today. Ouch.

What’s the next step? Well, we’re starting with meds. He’s got about 4 different drugs that he’s supposed to take, but the bottom line is that it’s not good. Adult dogs can have surgery that gives them ~2 years more. Jack’s a puppy and still growing. Surgery isn’t really an option at this point. Hopefully we can control his pain, that remains to be seen. We’re going to spend the next few days assessing what he needs really are, but I think the likely case is that he goes back to the breeder in Vacaville since she has other dogs and is around all day and can give him the care and attention that he needs. With both of us having full time jobs, and Jack needing a lot of special attention, I am concerned about our ability to care for him.

This has been really hard on us. Even as I write this, it’s hard not to cry. Mary Ann is really a mess, as she’s been the driver of this since the start. When we started getting serious about our relationship, I made it clear that she had to be willing to get in the plane and fly around with me driving it. She made it clear to me that I’d better be willing to get a dog. Ever since, she’s been looking at different breeds, thinking of names, etc. We finally settled on the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel when we went to the dog show with MA’s father in January. She researched who the top breeders were, and started calling them and getting to know them. She eliminated a lot of the “crazy” dog people, and settled on two breeders, one in Camarillo and one in Vacaville. When we moved to a place that allows dogs in July, and it turned out that the Vacaville breeder had a puppy available, she jumped on it and we picked up Jack Sprat literally the day after we moved in. She has given him nothing but love and attention, frequently at my expense, ever since. So, this is particularly hard on her. Anyone who is Facebook friends with me knows that I have become equally enamored with Jack, constantly posting photos of him and talking about all the fun and funny things he does. Jack has even brought us closer to many of our friends as they come over to see him and play with “the cutest puppy ever!”.

I’m not sure how to end this other than to say thanks to everyone who has expressed concern for him. We’re taking the best care of him that we possibly can.

Notes on Peruvian Culture

Peruvians like loud muzac. Everywhere we go, the background music is really loud. It started with LAN Peru, the national airline. Apparently, they think that foreign tourists also like this, since if we go to a restaurant and it is empty, within a few minutes of sitting down, the loud muzac will come on. Usually it’s local music, which is like Mexican music with more recorders and flutes in it, and some synthesizers, like 80s sounding. If it’s not Peruvian music, then it’s 80s American rock. Basically the same stuff you’d hear in a ski lodge, but more poppy, like George Michael. Anyway, I don’t get it.

Food: Empenadas seem to be really popular, and are good and in a lot of varieties. That’s the street food here, like Hot Dogs in the US. The national soft drink is Inca Kola. I noticed that all the Peruvians on the plane were drinking it, and now I see it everywhere, it’s definitely more popular than Coke. It’s yellow in color, I’d say almost exactly the color of urine. Needless to say, I was excited to try this stuff? What would urine-colored soda taste like? Turns out that it tastes like bubble gum. The most popular drink in Peru is bubble gum flavored yellow soda. It actually tastes pretty good though. Mary Ann tried some hot chocolate made from pure cacao (main ingredient in chocolate). Not so good. Gross in fact, but that was not because of the chocolate as much as the liquid it was mixed with. In general, the food leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve eaten several of my “emergency” power bars. The traditional holiday meal here (like turkey on Thanksgiving for us) is Guinea Pig. They kill them, boil them to strip the fur, then stuff them with mint and roast them on a skewer, and then you eat it with your hands. It’s actually pretty decent-tasting.

Choose your Guinea pig - sort of like the lobster tank at a seafood restaurant.


The dish, ready to eat!


We’ve stayed in 4 different hotels on this trip ranging from jungle cabin to “4 star” city hotels, and every one of them has had a rock hard bed. The weird thing is that despite being really hard, the beds are not uncomfortable. We asked one of our tour guides if all beds were like that, and they said no. I guess it’s just a hotel thing.

As with any trip which involves a lot of logistics, there have been a few times where things have become mini-crises. When this happens, the people are generally really helpful, but they also say “don’t worry” and then get on with things. We’re sitting there thinking “Hey man, we need to take action on this right now if it’s going to work out!” The thing we’ve come to realize is that what appears to be the people going to get on with their lives is not really what is going on – they walk casually away and then actually start trying to help you!

Almost every merchant requires nearly exact change. If something costs 3 soles and you only have a 20, it’s unlikely the merchant will have change available for you, so they’ll actually leave the store to go find change. There’s a constant mini-struggle to keep smaller coins and bills so that you can buy stuff. We haven’t figured this one out.

We’re staying in a “4 star” hotel in Cusco, which doesn’t have heat in the rooms, and the temp gets down into the 40s outside at night. There is a sign in the lobby indicating that checkout is at 9am! At least check-in is at 10am. I guess there are a lot of early morning flights into Cusco. Our flight landed at 7:05, so that makes sense.


Rules of the road: There are a few traffic lights, and those get obeyed, as there are tons of traffic cops around. Other than that, cars rule the road. If you’re a pedestrian, you’d better get out of the way, because the cars aren’t stopping. They will give you a small beep of the horn to let you know you’re about to be run over at least. The system seems to work well – even dogs have learned to get out of the way, which is pretty funny to see.

Catholicism, but without guilt! In 1532, the Spanish landed with a few hundred people and managed to wipe out all of the Incas and install Catholicism. Apparently, this is a different flavor of Catholicism though, since everyone seems to be guilt-free and happy. My favorite thing is that there’s a custom where you mount a small (6” tall?) cross on your roof, with two bull figurines on either side of the cross to ward off evil spirits. One of the evil spirits this stuff can ward off is your neighbors saying bad things about you or your house. We’ve even seen a few houses with beers next to the bulls. I guess they think God likes burgers and beers. Sweet.


The flag of the Cusco region has got 7 rainbow stripes and looks remarkably similar to the gay flag. That must have led to a few uncomfortable situations over the years.

Peru Trip, first 2 days

Wow, it’s a LOT of travel to get to Peru’s jungle. Here is what it took to get here, all times are SF to make it easy. Peru is in Midwest time zone, 2 hrs ahead of SF.

7:30 am – Super Shuttle pickup
9:44 am – SF – LA
2:05 pm – LA – Lima
11pm – land Lima. Lima’s airport is 40 min from Lima, so you have to wait in the airport, or pay $200 for a room at the hotel attached to the airport.
3:50 am - Lima – Cusco
5:05 am – land Cusco. Meet expedition people at the airport. Cusco is at 10,800’ elevation, so MA almost immediately started throwing up from altitude sickness. This continued until we were on the airplane to the jungle and descended.
10am – take off for jungle airstrip in a Cessna Grand Caravan, single engine turboprop.
10:45 am – land jungle airstrip @ Boca Manu, elevation 1500’. The Andes really drop off very steeply from Cusco to Boca Manu!
11:15 am – Load into boat to drive down river to Manu wildlife preserve
1pm – Arrive Manu wildlife preserve. Whew, we made it!

This place is located in virgin rainforest in one of the most biodiverse areas of the world. The river that we are located next to eventually feeds into the Amazon. It’s really flat here though – think about this – it’s probably 2000km of river, but only 1500 ft of elevation change for this water to make its way to the Atlantic Ocean

We’re here at a pretty good time – the end of the dry season. The reason it’s good is that a lot of the normal food sources from the rainy season are depleted, which makes the animals roam around looking for food.

We got up at 5am this morning and took a 20 min boat ride to an area where the former path of the river (it changed suddenly during the rainy season 4 years ago) had worn away the land to expose the layers of clay. Parrots and Macaws eat this clay because it helps to somehow counter the toxins that are present in the berries that they eat for food. So, each day at dawn they show up to this clay lick to eat. By they, I mean hundreds of birds. It’s REALLY cool. They have a little blind set up where you can come with your binoculars to watch them up close. First the smaller parrots come. These parrots look very much like the parrots that live in the Telegraph Hill area of San Francisco, and even make a very similar sound. Maybe this is where the pets that originated the flock came from? There are about 6 different species that show up though, and their markings are slightly different. Sometimes, something must spook the birds, and they will all fly off the lick at the same time. The noise of 100-200 parrots all flapping their wings to take off at the same time is pretty neat. Once the parrots are done, the macaws come. These are the big colorful red and green birds that most people think they will see a picture of if they look up “parrot” in the dictionary. Sometimes they are kept as pets, or are with street performers to take photos with in touristy areas. Really beautiful birds. When they fly, they are extremely graceful. They go around in pairs and are “married”. They fly together, sit together, clean one another, etc. They act like they’re in love. If you see 3 together, it’s parents with their baby. Makes me wonder if it’s a mean thing for these birds that are captivity to have to live alone, since there were no solitary macaws in the wild.

On the way back, we got to see some pretty neat things along the river:
- A capybara, the world’s largest rodent. About the size of a golden retriever. It had just crossed the river and was resting on the bank. I guess it eats grass.
- A Giant Anteater. Our guide hasn’t seen one all year, so we were lucky. This thing was really neat, probably 2 ft tall and 4 ft long, all shaggy. That thing must eat a ton of ants every day! Good for it, as there are ants everywhere here. The biggest ones I’ve seen are probably ½ inch long. Yuck!
- A turtle up on a log with a butterfly on its head. I guess the butterflies lick the salt from the turtle’s eye tears in some sort of symbiotic relationship. Cool to see that in person.

After lunch and an afternoon nap, we took a 1 ½ hour hike into the jungle to another clay lick and another observation platform to wait for the tapir. The tapir is the largest mammal in the jungle, weighing in at 250 Kg, about 3 times the weight of a human. The tapir usually comes late in the day, so we got there at 4:30 (it’s dark by 6). We waited silently under mosquito netting for about 1.5 hrs (another group had to wait 5 hours) for the tapir to arrive, but it was worth the wait – it was cool to see such a big animal up close in the wild. At the closest, we were only about 10 ft from it up in the platform.

The Manu area that we are is virgin jungle because it’s impenetrable. They aren’t kidding when they say this – when we’re on the trail, I think the furthest you can see is about 30 ft, and that’s what you can SEE. If you wanted to walk those 30 ft off the trail, you’d have to fight your way through a mass of vegetation.

There are no lions, tigers or bears here, so who is the king of this jungle? Turns out it depends on where you are. On land, it’s the jaguar, the world’s 3rd largest cat (behind lions and tigers). The tapir we saw had a scar from a jaguar attack on it’s hind quarters. When the tapir is young, it is vulnerable since it is small enough that the jaguar can get it’s jaws around the tapir’s neck. When it’s older, the neck is too thick. When the jaguar attacks the tapir, the tapir runs really fast, and tries to run next to the trees with spines on them, which a lot of the palms do. The spines are 4-6 inches in length, so the jaguar doesn’t hold on too long when that happens, and the tapir can escape.

If you’re on the water, it’s the Anaconda. The Anaconda is the world’s most powerful constrictor, and humans are easy prey. Crocs, no problem. The predator of the anaconda is the Giant Otter (6 ft!), but it takes a group of them to take one down. Apparently, the tapir also has a defense the anaconda. It can make it’s body very small when the anaconda is constricting (think of holding your breath to make your body smaller), and then it can very powerfully blow itself back up, causing the anaconda to let go, or risk being literally ripped apart from the force of the tapir’s expansion.

So, it seems to me that the tapir is the king of the jungle, even though it’s a plant eater. Our guide disagreed though since the tapir is not a meat eater.

Check out our photos at: http://www.neumannfamily.org/peru