From November 2022 Chudo is living at his new home in Switzerland with his loving family: Raphael (human papa), Liubov (mama), Medina (big sis) and recently little Leonardo!

 Our little Chudo continues to explore his new life and to face new challenges due to the health conditions. According to our dear Dr. Alder, the neurologist from Switzerland, who is helping us a lot, and based on several investigations, Chudo is affected by a congenital, possibly inherited, neurodegenerative disease. Lysosomal storage diseases like Gangliosidosis GM1 for example are a likely explanation for Chudo's neurological signs. These types of diseases are unfortunately progressive and ultimately fatal to the patient. Therefore, we were said earlier in Russia and then in Switzerland, that nobody can predict how long Chudo will live…That’s why we are enjoying and living every day in its fullest with Chudo and do everything we can to provide him the best quality of a dog life!

Chudo was born like that, he could not see from very beginning, and had a coordination problem with his back legs. Now with the time, he is walking much better, and he is dealing amazingly with the fact that he can not see with his eyes, but he uses his nose and his ears to orientate at home and in the garden! However, he started to have different “episodes”/”crisis”, it is when he is having a neurological pain, starting to scream and trying to bite his leg (sometimes he does bite his leg, then it is quite scary to release his leg from his strong mouth). It is difficult to understand sometimes what become a trigger for his “episodes”, and he has different periods:  some days, even weeks he might have slight, not strong episodes during the day, which are short in duration and are finishing quite fast. Some days he may have long and almost constant episodes when we are desperate to find the way to help him or to reduce the pain. The main trigger he has is the food, while he is eating or after the food, he is having those “episodes”, or before/after defecation, also when he is too tired or bored, sometimes it can happen out of the blue! His brain and the way its functioning is still a mystery for us, and for doctors too (there are not a lot of studies done and cases for this kind of diseases in dogs).

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And one thing we know for sure - is that despite ALL these struggles and challenges in his life, Chudo is active, playful, curious, kind, and generous dog! He wants to live and to explore new things in his life! He loves to be with his family, and finally to feel that he is at home, that he is loved and accepted the way he is! He loves to cuddle with us, while sleeping, he adores to play outside and jump freestyle like there is no boundaries, no illness, when he is free. He likes to play a Cow, when he is eating a lot of grass, and jump and to run in circles, he likes to fight his paper bags and chase our legs 😊

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Maybe he is not seeing with his eyes, but he can see with his heart. Maybe he is not always understanding what is happening, but he is longing to be close to a human being, to cuddle with his family and to know that he is not alone anymore.

We will share all Chudo’s new explorations and discoveries, as well as some parts of his everyday life in his Youtube Channel and also here!