Hannah’s Story

Age at diagnosis: 7 years 6 months

Breed: Miniature Poodle

Hannah is our wonderful, bright, cheeky seven and a half year old mini poodle. She has had a difficult life with her health and it seems so unfair for her to have to now cope with meningitis. As a puppy she broke her hip and we had a full hip replacement done. This was a success initially but unfortunately, after 2 years, the replacement hip worked loose and we had to have it removed. Hannah was incredibly resilient and before too long was running around and fully mobile without her hip.

She was diagnosed with probable unknown autoimmune meningitis in February 2026. She lost her housemate, Oliver, an 18 year old cat, a few days before symptoms began, and we really feel that stress contributed to the meningitis. Original treatment of antibiotics and 2ml prednisolone, reducing over 4 months, saw her return pretty much to her happy, cheeky self. On getting down to 0.5ml prednisolone she relapsed. She is now on 1.5ml prednisolone and two ciclosporin 25mg capsules a day. She has only just started this protocol and I expect this time the reduction in treatment will be much slower. Hannah has bounced back again, although with less vigour this time. She is walking and gets around well but has vision loss. We can only hope she will improve in that area but it is all unknown at this stage.

Her wonderful personality has never faltered. We are no doubt in for a long road but we will do whatever we can to give her a happy life for as long as she can manage to stay with us. She is family.

Hannah is part of The Theo Project's canine meningitis registry - a growing global collection of MUE, MUO and SRMA stories shared to help families facing this diagnosis.