Lesson Learned

I learned an incredible lesson this past week and I beyond thankful for the outcome. Almost 8 years ago my precious EmmiLou was born. In my opinion she was perfect from day one. I spoiled her rotten, much to my husbands dismay, in fact he will tell you I ruined her. I didn't care she was special and we instantly had a bond. She went on to do amazing things in the ring, all of which we are very proud of but never was the most important thing to me, she was my pet. The plan was to breed her somewhere around 3 and Anthony and I spent countless hours discussing stud dogs, most of the time agreeing, but there was the occasionally disagreement. She was OUR dog, OUR first together, and dogs are a passion we share. Well as time passed and with each passing heat cycle, I kept saying we will be in a better situation next season to breed her. With Anthony working at the Ritz it seemed we were moving all the time and we were always in a rental house, and to me I just couldn't raise puppies  in place we were only suppose 2-3 dogs. Pretty soon EmmiLou was 5 and we were about to have Aiden, then time really flew by and somehow we arrived at last week. Emma had been inseason starting in late January, it was a terrible one too, in fact I kept saying to Anthony 'something is wrong, I just know it.' She was fine though, ate, drank, ran around like the crazy dog she is and was completely normal, other than her crate looking like a massacre was occurring every hour. I even took her in for a smear to make sure and it was normal. I left Emma, Aiden and the other dogs with my mom while we went to New York, all was fine there too. All was fine until last Wednesday afternoon. I had been at work all morning and the boys had been home with the dogs. Everybody was fine when I arrived home at 11. Aiden wanted to go to the park, so I told him we could go after we ran some errands and when we went to leave he said he wanted to take EmmiLou too. I said fine, and we put her in the car, she seemed a little off, but I also had awoken her out of a dead sleep and just thought she was still sleepy. We ran the errands and headed to the park. I got both Emma and Aiden out of the car, Aiden walked her to the park and I turned her loose once we got away from the road. She didn't take off like she normally does but Aiden was calling her and so she would coming trotting back to him, she seemed sad which is not like her either. I called her over to me and offered her a cookie she took it and then immediately spit it out. I panicked, in Emma's almost 8 years of life she had never spit out a cookie, EVER! I told Aiden we needed to head back to the car, as we headed back she stuck close to Aiden and even he said to her, what's wrong EmmiLou? When your almost 3 year old notices something is off, you know something is wrong! I got home and let the other girls out, when they came back in, I made up their food and Em's. She looked at me and walked away. I panicked! She is always the one screaming and going insane for food. I threw food at the two girls, grabbed my phone and called my mom. I found Emma curled up on the couch with Aiden, he was hugging her and saying it's ok Emma, I told my mom what was going on. Of course it was after 5 o'clock, so we discussed what emergency clinic I should call and go to. I picked the one closest, called and headed there within 15 minutes. I called Anthony and my way, he was at work and of course it was dinner time, so he didn't answer. I was hysterical and I am sure my message is a hot mess. This was OUR dog, OUR child before Aiden. I tried to gather myself and explained to Aiden that he needed to be a good boy and we were going to fix EmmiLou. When we arrived at the Emergency Clinic we took her temperature 106.5!!!!! Now I really panicked, the only dogs I knew with that temperature died. They listened to her heart, her heart rate was 180. At this point, I am thinking I am going to loose her, meanwhile she was just standing there, no panting just a wag of her tail whenever Aiden would pet or talk to her. While waiting for the vet, she started to have nasty discharge, I immediately knew it was pyo. The smell made Aiden gag and I really started to panic. They took her back and started cooling her down and they brought me an estimate of what it was going to cost for the diagnostics to prove it was Pyo. I looked at it and said do it and start right now. The tech looked at me and said do you need to call someone, I remembering looking at her and thinking who the heck am I going to call, JUST SAVE HER! I called my mom to see if she could come and get Aiden, it was dinner time and dinner was the furthest thing from my mind. He was perfect the whole time except when they took her away, he cried that they were taking his dog away, he hugged her and told her he loved her. I started to cry thinking that may be the last time he ever saw her. She had hated children as a young dog and I remember thinking when I was pregnant, will I have to place her cause she won't be able to adapt, but like so many times before she rose to the occasion and has loved him from day 1. My mom and Jeff met me and took Aiden, I was hysterical, telling them if she died it was going to be all my fault. I should have spayed her 2 years ago. My mom, bless her, told me to get it together and did Anthony know what was going on. I had tried to call him two more times but the restaurant was busy and he couldn't answer. She promised she would go by the restaurant and tell him what was going on. I headed back to the clinic, where they told me exactly what I already knew, it was Pyo and it was huge. She wasn't stable enough to do surgery, but that her temp was coming down as well as her heart rate. I immediately thought I don't want this emergency clinic to do the spay, I want someone I know and trust to do it. Emma's mother had not down well during her spay surgery but my mom had been there and the vet I had grown up with did it, I trusted them, those two were no longer options. So I did what any crazy person at this point would do, I facebooked Dr. Wilcock, she is a vet in Kirkland, a Doberman breeder and family friend. I quickly explained what was going on and asked her if we got her stable enough could she spay her tomorrow. Bless her heart, she could. She told me what antibiotics she wanted her on and that she would see me in the morning. I told the emergency clinic they had two jobs, keep my dog alive and get her stable enough for me to transport her to Kirkland (an hour and half away) for a spay tomorrow. They told me they would do their best. I sat with her for a couple of hours, by the time I had to leave her temp had come down 2 degrees and she looked more comfortable. The discharge had become super heavy and I was glad that it was coming out and had not broke open on the inside. I left around 10, called Anthony, burst into tears and told him this was all my fault. He told me it was going to be ok, and that she would pull through this. Honestly, I didn't believe him, she still had a huge hurdle to overcome, the SURGERY. I think I slept 15 minutes Wednesday night. Then came Thursday, I headed to the emergency clinic and they said that she had stabilized and was doing quite well considering what was going on. I finished paying my bill and they brought her out. Surprisingly, she looked pretty good. I loaded her up in the car and headed to Kirkland, 2.5 hours later I arrived. The traffic was horrendous and I just kept thinking, I am going to lose her. I arrived at the clinic and the staff was wonderful. They immediately took Emma, hooked her back up to her IV and got her comfortable. The tech told me they were going to monitor her and do the surgery around 1:30pm. I was terrified to leave her, but I knew she was in good hands, so I left and headed home. When I got home I tried to fill my time, so I literally cleaned my house from top to bottom, cleaning base boards, grout and anything I could find. Dr. Wilcock called around noon, to update me. Emma was doing fine and they were going to go ahead with the surgery around 1-1:30. She assured me, they would do their best and she would call me when it was over. Literally it was the longest couple hours of my life. When my phone rang around 3:30, I braced myself for the worst. I was elated to hear she came through the surgery just fine, but that her uterus weighed 3.5lbs! How could I not notice this, but to say she was fine one minute and not the next, would be an understatement. Unfortunately Dr. Wilcock informed me Emma would not be coming home that night, I tried not to cry while on the phone, but all of me just wanted her home. I agreed that it would probably be best for her to stay and that if all was well in the morning, I would come get her. I called first thing the next morning, she was fine and seemed to be feeling pretty good. I thought to myself, well if I had 3.5lbs of puss removed from me, I would probably feel better too. They told me, I needed to wait until about noon to come and get her as they really wanted her to eat before I took her home. Now Emma is not a picky eater by any stretch, but she has never had canned food before and she doesn't like soggy kibble so I am sure she looked at whatever they tried to give her like what the heck is that! When I spoke to Dr. Wilcock at noon she was a little concerned that she hadn't eaten yet, I assured her that if I came and got her that I could get her to eat at home and all would be good. She told me that because it was me, and my family she would let her go but that if she didn't eat by the next day I needed to come back, I said, 'ok, great!' I grabbed Aiden and we headed to Kirkland. All day Aiden had asked where Emma was and if we could go see her. Each time he asked I explained that she had been sick and that she had to go to the doctor. However every time he asked, I grew more sad, there was going to come a time when one of 'his' dogs was going to pass away and how was I going to explain that. When Kirby died, he was to young to ask where he went, he lashed out in other ways, but it didn't last that long, maybe two weeks at most, but now he was old enough to know they were gone. With two 11 years old and one almost 8 year old, this was a very real dilemma, I am going to be faced with probably sooner rather than later. As we made our way north I started to explain to Aiden that he was going to have to be very careful with EmmiLou and that he needed to be quiet when we saw her. I wasn't sure how she would be when we busted her out of there. We arrived at the vet clinic, paid our bill and they brought her out from the back. She immediately ran to Aiden and he hugged her. She was so happy to see us and trotted out to the car like nothing had ever happened.

So here we are a week and half later, Emma is completely back to normal and am thankful for each and every person that helped, called, hugged and just plain sent good wishes our direction.  It was a valuable lesson to be learned and I am glad that the outcome was positive cause there were moments I didn't think it was going to be.