February into March was a good period for Percy. He maintained his weight and due to the phenobarbital would have eaten as much as I would give him, if his kidneys could have processed it. This was hard: I wanted to feed him to fatten him up, knowing the day would come when he would not want to eat so much. But that would have been too much for his kidneys.
The seizures were fairly controlled with the phenobarbital: Percy made it from January 28 to February 9 without a seizure, and then oddly had one every Monday for the next four weeks. The seizures were less severe– they did not last as long, he did not pee or try to get up afterwards. Most were in the middle of the night, but were now less disruptive to sleep.
Percy was nearly crazed for food from the phenobarbital and he would jump up and do all sorts of normally unacceptable things for a puppy training to be a dog! But it was hard if not impossible to discipline him in any way, as I knew he would most likely never make it to becoming a grown dog. Though I did come close to losing my temper once, when one evening, just back from an out of town trip, I’d fed the dogs and we headed out in the yard for some exercise. I did not pull the door shut tight behind me, and Percy had snuck in and I’m sure headed straight for my takeout, an enormous Caesar salad that I had just begun to eat before we went out. When I realized I had not seen Percy for a few minutes, I guessed where he was, and sure enough I found the door pushed open–this became a habit, and almost a game, as Percy would let himself in to look for food, like a kid raiding the cookie jar when Mom is away, though I usually was more careful not to leave things out. Sometimes I would come in to find him snooping about and he would look at me somewhat sheepishly. This time I found Percy on his hind legs, front paws on the counter with his nose in the salad, what little was left of it, eating away quite neatly from the plate. Into his crate he went, Caesar dressing clinging to his beard.
It was early in February that I realized Percy had what seemed to be large bumps growing up from underneath on either side of his nose. 
Looking in his mouth, I was horrified to see what looked like huge boil-cysts, the size of a golf ball, almost, on his upper gums, one on each side. They did not prevent him from eating lustily, but he was now less inclined to chew very hard things. They seemed to look much worse than their effect on Percy. Our regular vet was at a loss as to what they might be, suspecting some other developmental issue; the holistic vet drew a sample of fluid from them, both to send it out as well as to try to drain the growth, but it filled up again almost immediately. The lab that analyzed the sample had not seen anything of this nature, the cytologist there described it as fluid containing “refractile calcified debris (..) consistent with dystrophic calcification as is frequently observed in chronic inflammatory, cystic or necrotic lesions.” I only recently learned that oral ulcers are in fact one of the many possible symptoms of chronic renal failure.
February 12 BUN 129, creatinine 6.0, phosphorus 12.7
March 15 BUN 118, creatinine 5.6, phosphorus 9.2
While BUN and phosphorus would fluctuate slightly, one month being higher, another lower, Percy’s creatinine slowly rose through these months; it was 3.3 in September. March showed the only slight drop in the progression.