Your dog stumbles, forgets his house training, acts strange; it is Alzheimer’s?

Well, no, dog’s don’t get Alzheimer’s disease but what the can get bears a marked resemblances to Alzheimer’s. What dog’s can get is cognitive dysfunction syndrome, or CDS.

“Cognitive dysfunction syndrome is a complex chemical and physical change in the brain in dogs,” said Dr. William Ridgeway, a veterinarian. “It parallels Alzheimer’s in many, many [ways].”

Symptoms include barking, whining, anxiety and restlessness.

Some dogs may become aggressive when they’re confused or scared.

And there can be memory loss and diminished thinking and learning skills in the brain.

“Dogs will get these globs of data amyloid plaques – which is very similar to Alzheimer’s – in a portion of the brain and it decreases their cognitive awareness,” said Dr. Ridgeway.

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Now this is a scary story that luckily didn’t end as badly as it could have! Some Racine, WI residents thought their dog was playing with a toy gun in the backyard but upon investigation found what he was playing with was actually a real semiautomatic handgun.

One of the residents gently removed the gun from the dog by two fingers and took it into the house where he it fell and they found out that not only was it a real gun, but it was a loaded gun, it went off. Luckily the bullet ricocheted off the floor went into the ceiling, injuring no one.

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