ElizabethGPAPS

Isabella de Moreau 05/15/93 to 10/14/08

What a punch in the gut just to read the headline of this thread! Speck was such a bright light on GT. Please accept my condolences and know that he was admired and will live on in many memories. Godspeed, Specky!

I always give 1/2 an adult human dose.

Sending healing thoughts to your little girl! A long time ago my group had a girl with babesiosis - she turned yellow with jaundice...the whites of her eyes were the color of butter and her gums were like banana peels. It was freaky! She was treated with imidocarb and made a full recovery. I hope your girl feels better soon!

Oh, how sudden. What a shock it must have been to you! Sending my condolences on the loss of your girl...

My group adopted out a Greyhound named "Steel County" back in 1999 that died of OS when he was 3 - it was and is so unusual that I still remember his name! I would definitely NOT jump to any conclusions about your pup. There are lots of reasons for a limp and 95% of them are not cancer.

I never knew that was how Foxy died. How awful! Perhaps you would consider posting a yearly cautionary thread for people who might not think that a single bag of chocolate chips is something they should really treat as dog poison. Like sliding glass doors, sometimes it's the every day items that we don't even think about that pose the biggest hazards. People need to know about these dangers and be reminded - it saves lives. In fact...I wonder if it would be too macabre to start a thread about hounds who have been killed or seriously injured in their own homes, so that others can try to prevent the same thing from happening. For instance, I placed a GH who later died after chewing on someone's asthma inhaler. My own dog Simon was very seriously injured right after I adopted him when he collided with a nail sticking out of the fence - I didn't know it was there but I hadn't looked for it either. He lost part of his thigh. Glad Brooke's okay!

"Fluffy"?

Hmm...at this point approximately 15% of the dogs adopted by people answering this poll are considered by their adopters to be "true spooks". I myself have seen 2 true spooks come through my group in 11 years, or about 0.005% of the dogs we've placed (PLENTY o' shy/unsocialized dogs, believe me, but only two that are just genetic wingnuts). The only explanations I can think of for this are: 1. I have a different idea of what makes a spook than others do, or 2. Greytalkers are more likely to adopt special needs dogs. Maybe it's some of both!

He's hurting and the last thing he needs is his mommy losing it. So you will be strong, you will present a calm and positive demeanor to Soul, and you will get through this, okay? Switch into nurse mode and just git 'er done. Better days are ahead.

White light to Soul. Hopefully it's just IBD that can be controlled.

I just realized you have a webcam! She's sleeping with her head under the bed right now and I can see her breathing. Cool!

Sounds like a corn to me Maybe that's another avenue to explore if this one doesn't work.

Someone I know found a swelling on her boy's front leg that threw her into a complete panic. X-rays revealed that it was a hairline fracture. An OLD, HEALED hairline fracture that had probably happened before she ever adopted him! It just took her two years to notice it and freak out. Glad Alimony's okay.

You know, I guess I'd want to try some antibiotics and maybe an x-ray before I started cutting things open to see what there was. That being said, and I know this is totally contradictory to what I just said, but I've known two GH's with chronic foot problems that turned out to be foreign objects - one was glass from a light bulb and one was some kind of plant matter. Both of those were only figured out with exploratory surgery because the foreign matter didn't show up on x-ray. I've also known two GH's with encapsulated cysts in the foot that also had to be removed surgically - one several times as it kept coming back. All four of these pups were subjected to long, drawn-out processes in which surgery was the last resort and ended up being the only thing that finally helped.

It looks like an abcess (like if there was a foreign body in there), but you wouldn't think that would be hard for the Vet to diagnose. Has it changed size? What is the consistency of it? Hard, spongy, liquidy, meaty...?

So you're saying that Rocky can no longer live with you because he can't get up and down the stairs while you're at work? Let's break this down... 1. The only reason he needs to go up and down the stairs while you're at work is so he can use the dog door. 2. The only reason he needs to use the dog door is so he can go potty where you'd like him to. So what we really have here is an old dog who can't hold his bladder/bowel for the whole workday, right? And do you think this is NOT something that every single one of us who works outside the home has to deal with as our dogs get older? 95% of us who work full time and have old dogs don't even have dog doors! We manage with crating, ex-pens, dog-walkers and day care, and wee-wee pads and diapers if we have to (getting old is rarely pretty - you'll be there someday too). We don't ditch our dogs with strangers, and we certainly don't euthanize them while they're still happy and enjoying life. My 13 year old Savannah pees every single day while I'm at work. Do I like it? Of course not. I supply weewee pads and appreciate whomever invented vinyl flooring. It's never even occured to me that I should get rid of her! Good grief. Rocky probably doesn't have a whole lot of quality time left if his back end is going. Please make his last few months full of love and forgiveness for his old-age infirmities. Then look at all the people here losing their dogs to cancer at 7, 8 or 9, and thank God you got to see him get old at all.

I know exactly what you're going through. Isabella was basically just a working head on a useless body at the end, but she never gave me a signal that she was ready to go, and still did not pass willingly when the day came. Sometimes we just have to make the decision for them and know in our hearts that it's right. Remember that old, sick dogs are going to die - we just get to decide how much they'll suffer first. I hope you have much more time with your girl before the bad outweighs the good.

A light of hope to the sick ones, and a guiding beacon to those that had to leave us.

What a grand old age Rocco reached! He and Isabella were born just a couple of weeks apart and passed on the same day. Godspeed to him, and my condolences to you and all who loved Rocco.

It's done. She went peacefully and without sound or struggle, but true to form, her stubborn heart didn't stop for many minutes after breathing ended. Goodbye to my special, special girl Thank you everyone for your kind words. This was my first time euthanizing a pet. It changes you, doesn't it? As a side note - I really recommend to those of you facing this to give a sedative about an hour beforehand (I gave 25mg ace) - it helped me a lot that she was kind of zonked out and not looking around with curious and trusting eyes going "Hey! We have company!"

Isabella de Moreau, love of my life, has an appointment with the rainbow bridge tomorrow at 3:00. It will happen here, at home. It's been a long time coming - years, I suppose. Her spinal degeneration started in 2004 with occasional stumbling and the disease has slowly, inexorably claimed her bit by bit. It's been bad for a while now...a year? Two years? When did she start needing help up the stairs? When did she stop needing help and start needing to be carried? When did she stop going upstairs at all? It happened at the pace of a glacier...and with each loss of function she and I simply adjusted to the "new normal" and went on. Two weeks ago I came home from work to find Isabella lying helplessly on the back patio, her pajamas soaked in urine, unable to get up. Her bed is in the house but I would leave the back door open for her so she could go out and lay in the sun - that's always been such a source of enjoyment for her. In younger days she would actually get up and drag her outdoor-bed back into the sun if an offending cloud settled in, or as the sun moved and shadows were cast. It always made me smile to see Isabella - with her relocated bed, of course - lying in the last crack of sunlight at the very end of the yard at day's end. She wasn't going to accept anything less than all there was (which seemed to be her philosophy about life in general, come to think of it). That was the last day that Isabella ever stood up. I had our housecall Vet come look at her that night - she'd been examined 10 weeks earlier but falling down and not getting up was something new. We decided to start Isabella on low doses of prednisone and a broad-spectrum antibiotic. It couldn't hurt - this is an immobile, anorexic, incontinent 15.5 year old dog. Things don't tend to get better at that age - one just hopes to prolong the status quo. So, the prednisone certainly stimulated her appetite and thirst. But she still doesn't get up. She doesn't even try to move around. However it is that I position her before work or bedtime is exactly how I will find her 8 or 10 hours later. For the first week and a half I took her outside and balanced her on her spindly legs and pressed her little belly to potty her several times a day, but she has started to cry in pain now when I move her. Okay, so we do diapers and weewee pads. I bring her food and water and prop her up to eat and drink. She is ravenous for the first time in years. I stretch her legs and toes and turn her over occasionally, like a patty on a grill. We can do this, right? The new normal. But now the pressure sores have started, including a large one on her right hip that's extremely alarming and has got to be excrutiatingly painful, though she doesn't react when I clean and dress it. Her front legs are swollen from edema. Her joints are stiffening as they're no longer being used to bear weight. Her left front leg is permanently tucked up. Her head is skeletal, her body is becoming atrophied and twisted. At the end of passing urine a big glob of something bluish-white comes out. Her right eye is suddenly weepy. She is simply falling apart. I've laid her next to me on the couch as I type this...I keep reaching over to pet her and I feel only the sharpness of her bones. She brightens at my touch and looks over at me with love. More, she says. In my eyes she is still absolute perfection. I feel like a traitor for even making the arrangements for tomorrow. But she's broken and I can't fix her - I can only release her. May she forgive me. I'll write a proper eulogy for the Remembrance section when I'm ready to celebrate Isabella's life instead of mourn her death. Thanks to all the Greytalkers for being here and listening and understanding.

No cancer here - dogs are 13, 13, 15. I know I'm lucky.

With every home visit I remind adopters about the danger of glass doors and we talk about stickers and clings. I tell them Emily's story and it really drives the point home. You have saved lives with your reminders - please don't stop posting them. I for one would like to see a pinned article for newbies about common household hazards.

Here are my little jammie-clad seniors. All purchased from A Dog's Dream.