Three battles with the fatal canine disease leads a 
Los Angeles couple to a veterinarian in the Antelope Valley

n This vet can save dogs in the early stages of canine distemper, but because of his fear of reactions within veterinarian community, he has kept his discovery quiet for almost three decades. The common belief among vets is that there is no cure for canine distemper. However, Dr. Alson Sears may have stumbled into one of those fortunate accidents of science where a breakthrough can happen. 

Tug Selkie Shadow Galen BEFORE and AFTER the cure

NOTE: I wrote this story on canine distemper in June of 1997, chronicling a year in which Amy and I fought the disease three times. This was the last story that I wrote for the Los Angeles Times before I began teaching at Los Angeles Valley College. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, after I left the newspaper this story fell between the cracks and was never published in print. I'd thought it was lost completely until earlier this year when I found a copy of this very rough draft on an old computer disk. After I published this story here on the Internet in May 2000, Dr. Alson Sears  felt compelled to publish the details of his canine distemper treatment. Admittedly, my story here is only lightly edited.  Copyright© Ed Bond 2000 Originally written in June 1997 SUMMARY By ED BOND    Let me tell you how we named our dogs.    Tug was a throwaway dog, an eight-week old shepherd-mix pup with fur ravaged by mange. As Amy and I walked her around the block, I would spin the leash in front of her. She would catch it and, well, tug back.    We got her a year ago in February. She left us that March.    Selkie was a black lab, with some shepherd, a messy eater with a nose perpetually coated with her previous meal. She was named out of hope, from an ancient Gaelic mythical creature of the sea with an insecure relationship with man. The hope was that she would not leave us.    We had rescued her in mid-May. She left in mid-June.    By the time we found Shadow, in October, we were mentally exhausted, too drained for a creative name. But she shadowed us around the house, so we applied that verb to her. An Australian Cattle Dog - again with some shepherd - she is muscular and high strung, taken to barking at 1 a.m. Either Amy or I drag ourselves out of bed, and if we have the patience, close our hands to her head, make eye contact and as calmly as possible say, ``No barking.''        Galen's first act with us - this February - was to put his chin on Amy's thigh, followed by one front paw, then another. His name means calm in Gaelic, but later we would learn his demeanor was part fraud, he was already weary from battling an old enemy of ours.    In a year, we fought that enemy four times, and became too familiar with his attack, the silence, deception and betrayal.    Thirty years ago, this enemy was as common as fleas. Today, vets tell us how unlucky we were to have faced it so often. Most vets never even see it.    The tally, so far: two dead, one survived and one never attacked.    Now let me tell you how we fought canine distemper.

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