A goodbye and a Welcome Home

[la_belle_laide]

Today we had to say goodbye to Belle, my Gran's beloved mastiff. Bell outlived Gran by over two years. She was a huge, gentle girl, who never asked for anything more than food, pettings and walks in the yard. Aside from a blown cruciate years ago, she never had a sick day until recently. About two weeks ago she lost her ability to walk and had to be carried in a sling everywhere. She lost her housetraining and briefly stopped eating, and started throwing up. She got her appetite back but never regained her ability to sit, stand or walk. She started doing this constant barking, either of confusion or frustration. Aside from the last two weeks, she never had any illnesses. Thirteen is ancient for a mastiff.

Last night I sat with her for about a half an hour, sobbing my face off and telling her she was a good girl. She just kept licking my hand and I was hoping she would understand what was going on. This morning the vet made a house call (none of my usual vets; this one a friend of my uncle's.)

Now, the house is so quiet without her, and her room is dark. (Her room was Gran's small apartment, which was next to mine. Not sure what I'm going to do with that, but it is studio-apartment sized, with a full bathroom and kitchenette space – I took down all the kitchen stuff after Gran passed.)

The good news is that Haku came home today. The heart murmur went away—thankfully!--and the vets were still insisting that it would be a good idea to have the nearly-thousand-dollar sonogram/echo done anyway. Even though his ($200 per session) EKGs were all coming back normal and the murmur had peaced out. I said no. I just couldn't see why it would be necessary. Of course I'll spend weeks and maybe months agonizing over whether it was the right decision or not, but I mean come on, here's an asymptomatic dog who had an event under anesthesia; doesn't it make sense that that's what caused it? I seemed to get conflicting reports over what exactly was up, also. One vet was telling me the murmur was a 2-3 (the scale is 1-6,) but the others were like, "Dude no way, it was just a 1." One vet assured me that the murmur was not related to any electrical problem and his troubles under anesthesia were some Saluki mystery, and the sono/echo would only be necessary if the murmur continued. To check for structural damage to the heart. In fact, I made him be totally clear that he didn't think there were any electrical problems because A) epilepsy and B) Haku has had e-stim in the past and I wanted to mention it to any future rehabbers, should he require that. NOTE TO SELF: HE ASSURED ME IT WASN'T ELECTRICAL.

But then when I said "no" to the echo/sonogram after the murmur disappeared, all of a sudden there was talk about how it could be an arrhythmia. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, someone, but an arrhythmia wouldn't show up as a structural anomaly, right? All his EKGs were clean and the murmur was gone. What, exactly, was a sono going to show?

Of course I went home with advice to check his heart rhythm once in a while, because sudden arrhythmias are asymptomatic until it's too late etc. That'll keep me on my toes, you know. I don't know, I just felt ever so slightly jerked around over the sonogram thing. But I'm going to keep on questioning my decision no matter what.

THEY ARE GOOD VETS. They're actually the best ones on the island, at least one of them is, I mean. I just wish for a bit more clarity.

ANYway. Haku is at home, thankfully, and though his leg is bruised and swollen to hell and back, he is actually touching his foot to the ground already. Which, with the last (three) surgery(-ies) on his other leg, it took him about two months IIRC to do that. So I'm pleased with his leg and hopeful that by springtime he'll be tearing up the yard and being a Saluki again. In fact I'm going to go back and check my LJ to see how his progress was last year after the TPLO.

So I'm happy that Haku is home but I'm missing Belle hardcore. I had only two clients today and one was my usual wealthy, always-late, never-tipping guy and the other was a woman with so many joint problems and autoimmune dysfunctions that here legs and fingers were twisted in the wrong directions. Like seriously, her one leg was rotated so medial that I couldn't imagine how she was keeping her balance. Some reciprocal inhibition stretching actually straightened her foot, like visibly, immediately, about 20 degrees or so. I was really happy.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I am off. Dear Universe: I want to play Zelda, eat, play Zelda, eat, play Zelda, eat, watch Torchwood, read, and go to bed (with breaks between to take the dogs outside a few times.) PLEASE DO NOT ASK ANYTHING MORE OF ME.