In The Anza Borrego Desert

And it worked. By this time, Billy was at the University of California Veterinary Medicine School getting all the most expensive and impressive tests they had, but they also said there wasn't any Lyme in California. I spent around a thousand dollars on tests that didn't tell us anything that wasn't already obvious, and there were no doctors left who could perceive a patient with their own eyes. Not to denigrate modern technology, but they needed tests and equipment or they didn't know what they were looking at.

Billy could hardly stand up. If you shined a light in his eyes he yelped. I had to carry him outside to do his business. If you picked him up wrong, he screamed. I couldn't stand it. I insisted on antibiotics. They prescribed tetracycline. It didn't work. I said, lets use Doxycycline, because we obviously have the same symptoms and it is working on me. They said they couldn't do that because Doxycycline hadn't been tested on dogs and the recommended treatment was Tetracycline. They were condescending but adamant.

In The Cosumnes River

I said, "You mean that even though I have discovered a treatment that works, you are willing to let my dog die a painful death just because it hasn't been tested on dogs?" It made no difference. I suspect their education had compromised their intelligence so much that they actually thought this was an acceptable attitude. Then they wanted to operate. Surgery. Cut open his leg joints and shorten the ligaments, and said it might work or might not but I'd have to keep him from running after that. I remembered then that this was a teaching hospital. It appeared to me that they were experimenting. I was horrified. I took him home and didn't go back.

Then I got his regular Vet to prescribe the Doxycycline. He didn't know what to do either, but wasn't afraid to try, as the alternative was completely unacceptable. We didn't have a recommended dosage so I gave Billy my dose reduced by the difference in our weight. In 24 hours he could walk again. In 48 hours he was no longer in pain.