Ralphie the dachshund, Kaylee the rat terrier,
and your fully clothed (for real!) blogger during happier days.
——————————
Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook or in real life are already hip to the meaning of this post’s title, but for those who aren’t a quick update.
A few weeks ago my eldest dog kid Ralphie went into renal failure; after a 4-day hospital stay, it was determined that there was nothing we could do to save him. We brought him home last Monday afternoon and, after giving him 76 wonderful, pampered hours, he was euthanized on Thursday (incidentally, my birthday).
Two days later we rushed our second-eldest dog Kaylee to the same ER for a snake bite, which turned out to be the least of our problems. The vet ran her bloodwork “just in case” and found that she, too, is in renal failure. She’s currently undergoing the same treatment as Ralphie, which will hopefully lead to a slightly better outcome – a few weeks or months vs. a few days. Currently they’re trying to flush out her kidneys with IV fluids, which should get her values down; after that, they’ll try to wean her off the fluids to see if/how her kidneys function under more normal circumstances. Complicating matters is her heart murmur; push the fluids too hard and they could send her into congestive heart failure. Luckily that hasn’t happened – she’s got a strong heart, that one! – but it does mean that her treatment is more conservative and will take longer. We should know more tomorrow morning.
Our very last photo of Ralphie. We somehow managed to take over 900 in the last three days of his life, but I haven’t the heart to look at any of them yet.
——————————
(We had our other dogs checked out in case there was some weird environmental cause – they all managed to walk through a puddle of antifreeze at the park and lick their paws clean without my noticing, for example – but the five youngest are all in great health. The vets are fairly positive that the timing is just a coincidence. A horrible, horrible coincidence.)
Anyway, I had a bunch of posts scheduled in advance – everything published last week was written well before Ralphie fell ill, and the twitter digests are generated automatically – but the queue has mostly run dry. Probably you won’t hear from me in a while.
I plan on writing more – much, much more – after the crises have passed. Until then, hit me up on Facebook if you’d like to follow Kaylee’s progress; I’ve been more active there this week than in the first four months of 2013 combined. If you could, please send positive thoughts/prayers/positive energy/good vibes my way. These dogs mean the world to me; to lose one is difficult enough, but two in as many weeks? Unthinkable. I could use all the extra strength you can spare.
A few of the many photos we took during today’s two-hour visit with Kaylee. We were able to take her outside, which was awesome. We spread a blanket out in the shade (next to a vacant office building – you take what you can get) and got some quality cuddle time in. While we were gone the staff set up a “buffet” for her in Exam 2, where I tried to coax her into eating. I got her to lick the tongue depressor a few times, but mostly I had to trick her into eating by plastering baby food to the roof of her mouth.
She was pretty annoyed with me by the time we left.
——————————
