This is a hard blog to write. It’s been exactly four weeks since Shorty died. Not one month, since it was October 19th, but four Wednesday’s ago. For those of you that don’t know the story, Shorty quit eating September 27th, 2011 so I took him to the vet September 29th. The vet did a little blood work and told me he probably got into some bad grass and had an upset stomach. Not to worry about bringing him back until his shots were due in February. Of course, I was relieved. Early the next week, I called and said he’s still not eating. They told me to give him chicken and rice and watch him. I told them he would eat a little chicken but no rice.
Called back again and told them I could get him to eat some biscuits, a little food here and there but not much and he was usually such a piglet. The told me he was being a finicky eater. During all of this, I was online looking up every possible reason a dog wouldn’t eat and I compiled a list. So I called back again and read them my list and said something is wrong. I took him in the next day.
They checked for parasites first and it was negative. I seriously thought they were going to send me home again so I said “Something, is wrong and you have to find it”. So they proceeded to go through my list. He had a high fever, a pretty bad infection, a mass on his spleen and had lost blood because of it and needed a blood transfusion. I didn’t even know what a splenic tumor was but I diagnosed it. And had they so much as at least taken his temperature when I brought him in the first time, they would have realized he had an infection and fever and started him on antibiotics right away.
By the time I found out the severity of his condition, he needed the surgery and a blood transfusion. It was on a Saturday and I did not want to leave him all weekend so I took him back Monday morning. At this point I was questioning their competency but called 2 other vets and one wasn’t in, the other was busy and couldn’t call me back until later in the day.
I felt like I didn’t have a choice. So I asked them about the surgery and they said they had performed it before with success. This was Monday, October 17th. He had the surgery, then the blood transfusion. She said she didn’t want me going in that night because he might get excited to see me so I could go in the next morning. He was groggy but I crawled in the crate with him and we got to spend some good snuggly time together. When I went to see him that afternoon, he was doing so well. His eyes were alert, I got to walk him outside to potty, I sat on the floor with him on my lap, he ate a few bites of food and I was elated. They told me he was out of the woods and that I could probably bring him home the next day.
I got a call the next morning that he had passed during the night. They guessed heart failure. I read later in the transcripts that he had thrown up. No one bothered to tell me that. I also read online that this type of cancer (hemangiosarcoma) is the fastest growing cancer in a dog. If they would have diagnosed it when I first brought him in, maybe the mass wasn’t as large and he wasn’t so anemic. Or maybe because his little body was so weak, he wasn’t strong enough for the surgery. Maybe they should have done the transfusion, had him on antibiotics for a week before the surgery. I’ll never know.
I got the pathologists report back and the cancer was benign. No signs of a splenic tumor. In all fairness, it did say his condition was guarded because usually these type of lesions come from hemangiosarcoma but again, I’ll never know. And I could have given him peroxicam to stop the growth.
Shorty is the reason I started this blog. I miss him every second of every day. He was my sweet little scared dog. I’ll write more of his story later. It’s long. Took me 4 months to rescue him, police, court, shotguns, poison and a whole lot of meat and love.
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