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He took me into a room where the cats are housed_distemper is only contagious among canines_Tug had been put there as a precaution. She had been loaded down with drugs but still dragged herself out of her stupor to say hello.
   The phone rang early the next morning. Tug had more seizures. ``You should be prepared for the worst,'' Stein said.
   ``We'd still like to have her back,'' I said. ``Can we pick her up this afternoon?''
       I called Amy after teaching a morning class at Los Angeles Valley College. ``It's distemper,'' she said, and then added firmly. ``But it is NOT a death sentence. We are going to do everything we can for her.''
       ``You bet,'' I said. Boosting the immune system was the key, we were told.  And our regular vet was willing to try a few treatments.
   Somehow, for us that became a vow to fight for Tug any way we could.

fter these changes happen, I don't find that they have much of a chance,'' Foley said.
Dr. Stein explained the basic medication that afternoon: Phenobarbital and anti-biotics every 12 hours. The Phenobarbital was to control the seizures and antibiotics - which I had originally assumed was to attack the virus - was meant to prevent secondary diseases from attacking in the absence of an immune system either weakened or already destroyed by the virus. She was also given Valium to supplement the Phenobarbital.
   ``In about a week, she'll either get better,'' he said as we left. ``Or the seizures will get worse.''
       A blonde-haired young man handed Tug to us through a door in the back of the building. The muscles in her head were rigid and bulging. Saliva drained from her mouth, and snot and mucous coated the fur on her chest. I wrapped Tug in a blue towel as I took her into my arms and put her onto Amy's lap after she got into the car.
   Throughout the long rush hour drive home in the sunset traffic, we took turns talking to her. ``Good girl Tug. You're going to be OK, Tug.''
    That Friday night, I collapsed asleep on the couch. Amy was bartending, and for the past few days we seemed to be going around the clock, cleaning up Tug, making her comfortable, getting the medication into her, and getting food into her. With the seizures and the drugs, Tug had been unconscious for a couple of days.
   Then, as I dozed on the couch at about 12:30 a.m., something jarred at my arm.
   I'd left her in a basket on the floor by my side.
   Tug jumped at my arm again. She cried. She was awake and had to go outside.
   Her walk was staggered, the legs having trouble supporting her. She seemed to propel herself forward to keep herself upright. And kept drifting off to the side like a drunkard headed for the bar. 
       She could barely support herself when she stopped to pee. She walked for a half a block with me. Back inside, she kept walking, and as she walked I used a syringe to squirt food and water into her mouth.
   We kept that up for another hour, until Amy got home from work. ``You're going to get better,'' I told Tug. ``You're going to be playing on the beach with us real soon.''
       The beach in Playa del Rey had been her favorite place.
   Unfortunately, the demylenization is not the main attack of distemper.  ``It's more a secondary problem,'' Foley said.
   Distemper attacks nearly every organ in the body, from the kidneys and liver to the enamel in the teeth, as well as the structure of the eyes, and the tear ducts. In the brain, while the short-circuiting of seizures is occurring, the virus is also attacking other cells including those of the cerebellum, where the higher consciousness resides.
   We didn't know it, but we were losing Tug cell by cell.
   The fight lasted another two weeks. Our vet tried acupuncture treatments and vitamin C. We didn't want to think about killing her. The seizures were not painful, we were told, the animal simply feels nothing during the episode. Tug seemed to settle down into a pattern of one long but mild seizure. Often we felt the top of her head as the two muscles there throbbed rhythmically.
   Like having a baby, we took over all her bodily functions for her, hoping that if we took care of everything else, she could fight off the virus. She lost control of her bowels and we diapered her. We bathed her and fed her with a baby bottle, a formula of special puppy food, milk supplement and water blended into a kind of canine milkshake.
   As long as she kept eating, which she did, we felt there was a chance.
   We lost sleep. It seemed our eyes were playing tricks on us, not sure if she was seizuring or just breathing, we watched her carefully, looking for any hope.
   One morning after preparing a cocktail of her medicines in a shot glass of water heated in the microwave, I watched in bleary-eyed disbelief as the yellowish solution evaporated before my eyes. The glass split in two.
   It took a couple of minutes for my addled mind to realize that heating the water in a microwave had ruined the glass. A small hole had cracked the bottom.
  Eventually, pneumonia set in.
   At times it seemed that Tug would forget to breathe and only remember to as we called out to her.
   By now we were moving her legs and head for her to keep her muscles from atrophying. We changed her position routinely to keep the fluids from the pneumonia from settling in one part of her lungs.
   After one breathless period, late one night as we thought about getting ready to put her down for the night, my tired brain tricked my mouth into saying the words. ``Do you think we should put her to sleep?''
       But we weren't ready to give up yet. We continued the routine until one Sunday morning after she had eaten a portion of the food in her baby bottle. Tug choked and vomited on me.
   The virus had finally attacked her stomach. We weren't able to feed her.
   Later that day, while I was at work, Tug stopped breathing again and Amy hospitalized her at our vet.
   They were able to feed her better, and a more intensive drug treatment was started with an intravenous tube.
   While visiting her a couple days later, our vet, Dr. B.. suggested one more thing.  She had heard of a vet in Lancaster who used some unorthodox treatments, and asked if she could try a blood transfusion from another dog she had that had survived distemper.
   Her idea would not work. That vet, Dr. Alson Sears of Lancaster, had tried without success using simple blood serum from distemper dogs. But the treatment that he claims does work is a little more mysterious than that.

       Tug died in her sleep, just before her evening medication, sparing us the decision to euthanize her. We were on the way to visit her. I was making an awkward left turn just a couple of blocks away from the vet when the pager went off. I handed it to Amy.
   ``It's the vet's,'' she said. Then after a busy silence as we moved through traffic, she said, ``I think it's bad news.''
       She was brought to us in an examination room, wrapped loosely in a blue blanket, and laid on a table, resting with her eyes open and cool to the touch. In the three weeks we had battled the virus, Tug's fur had come in, more a full shepherd now. Her legs had been growing, giving the slightest suggestion of adult shape.
   I was surprised to collapse in tears against Amy.