It has just been a wild week at our house. Our little dog, Ruby, woke up throwing up in her crate and sounded like she was suffocating. We have no idea how old she is since we found her along the side of the road on a vacation. But we know that she has a heart murmur, is missing one eye, blind in the other eye, and can’t hear well. I loaded her up to take her to the vet thinking she probably wasn’t going to pull through.
When I went out to do chores that morning our little senior kittie, Scooter, had labored breathing on top of the fact he has been losing weight all summer. I had been feeding him a special diet three times a day and just couldn’t get weight on him. I decided to load him up too and get him checked out.
The vet was optimistic about Ruby. The thinking was that since she was a smashed-faced dog that the vomiting caused the gurgling noise because her lungs were clear, her heart was good, and she didn’t have a temperature. So we opted to do a nausea shot and take her home to see how she responded.
For Scooter, on the other hand, she said the labored breathing, the weight loss, and the fact that he was 15 years old was not good and his prognosis was bleak. We decided it was time to end his suffering.
If you have never had to make this decision for an animal, let me tell you, it’s a tough one. With nearly all of our animals hitting the senior years at once we are terrified about what the next five years is going to look like at our house. It is going to be a hard couple of years.
We brought Scooter home and buried him under the mulberry tree where all our other cats have been buried. We are continuing to monitor Ruby because we’re not sure she has made a full recovery.
Next was Laila, a boxer mix from our local shelter, went to the vet a few days later for a minor procedure. She was perfect and all is well with her, but it was another trip to town and another office visit. Cha-ching!
Then on Friday morning one of our cats, Bandit, came out of the cat house carrying his front left foot. I was supposed to have an appointment an hour away that morning, I called our vet and she was leaving early, so I had to get him into town quickly, I hadn’t even showered, and then I would have to run him back home before heading to my appointment. I ended up cancelling my appointment and off to the vet we went with him before the weekend to see if it was broken. She didn’t think it was broken just by feeling it and since our vet bills completely exceeded their budget this month, we opted to just go with a shot and monitor before doing any xrays. Well, here we are on Monday morning and Bandit is still carrying his foot. I feel like I always make the wrong call on whether to xray or not and this time was no different.
We have to mail our last document to the U.S. Secretary of State and Chinese Embassy today for authentication, so we will take the big guy back into the vet this morning. It has just been nonstop animal stress lately. They bring us so much joy, but you really have to be on your toes and willing to drop everything if need be to get them the care they need.
A Simple Prairie Life 