SixSquared
05-21-2008, 10:15 PM
and a lot of you will probably have stupid things to say, being that this forum is 99% assholes... but for the 1% that aren't, and the .2% of that 1% that know me personally... I know it may seem silly, but please keep my dog in your thoughts...
So I'm in a weather class... we're learning all about why the seasons change, what makes winter, what makes summer, why some winters are colder than other winters, all of that. And now, looking back, it all seems so short...
Our first winter in our new house (1999), it snowed. She was so cute in her little orange and blue tracksuit.
It was a perfectly clear summer day when I sat crosslegged in the grass at our old farm. I was every inch of a gangly, awkward 7th grader (on my way to 8th). She was the pup in my arms... always the reason for my biggest smiles.
It was a hazy fall day when I took the famous (in our family) Audrey Dogburn photo. She was fresh out of a bath, so I tied the towel around her head and put sunglasses on her. She sat while I took a picture.
It was a hot, humid summer at the farm when I took the picture of her chest-deep in the creek... chest deep on her means it was about 4 inches deep.
A rainy winter day gave me the picture of her on the piano.
It was a cool crisp fall morning when I sat on the porch at the farm singing Leaving on a Jetplane to her because I had to fly to New Jersey for my uncle's funeral. After that, every time I left for more than a weekend, I sang that song to her.
Springtime means a red and black mohawk and trips to the UGA rugby pitch.
She taught me the most important things in life. Before she was even a year old, she came back with two puncture wounds on her leg. Something had bitten on her, I still think it was playing too rough with our pit bull. We took her to the vet, and he reached for a muzzle. I gave him a look, he offered the "sometimes dogs bite when they're in pain" excuse. I said "Not this dog" with so much conviction that he believed me. She didn't make a liar out of me. Even when he was pushing, prodding, and running tubes through the injury, she merely sat, shaking. Doing her trademark sigh every once in a while.
She has never made a liar out of me until now. "She's too small to do agility... and not really the type." is what dad said. Two weeks later we went to her first trial. She came in 2nd. "She can't tell the difference between Coke and Diet Coke, can she?" was the question from Melissa. Sure enough, she drank the regular coke and left the diet coke... then followed that with licking the ranch dressing off the lettuce and leaving a perfectly clean piece of lettuce on the floor. Hey, I never said she had the most healthy diet. "Don't you know liquor can be fatal?!" my mother yelled when me and Melissa spilled some on the floor. My mother obviously never watched her lick Bacardi 151 off the pool deck while Mel and I learned the age-old bartender trick of blowing fire. I say she's the best ever, and she lives every single day of her life proving it to me and everyone who meets her. In our 13 years together, she's never made a liar out of me until now.
When surveys on here ask when the last time I cried was, I always retort with my "I don't cry" answer. Because I don't. But today, she has made a liar out of me. She wasn't putting any weight on her right foot, and it was really stiff throughout the leg. That was last night. This morning, it was the same thing, so I called and made an ASAP appointment with the vet. My mind was in a million places about what it could be. The optimist in me said "Maybe she just has a cut on her foot or a sprain or something". The pessimist said "what if something's broken or torn?".
The pessimist was correct.
Her right elbow is broken.
And it's not the kind of break where they can just put a cast and splint on to stabilize it.. it's a break through the joint.
I took a moment to let that settle, took a breath, and asked what our next step is.
A specialist has to see her. Putting it back together involves hardware. Screws, pins, and a small plate.
And a $3000 tab.
But the money was the last thing I cared about.
The other concern with the surgery is that even if they put it back correctly, it will heal with arthritis around it. She already has arthritis. Only the specialist will be able to tell how much worse it will get.
The other option is fusing the joint. She'll have to kind of re-teach herself how to walk, since she will lose mobility in her leg. The vet didn't really have many pros and cons for this option. He said it's best to do the full surgery generally, with fusing being a next-to-last option.
The last option is amputating her leg. But it's not really an option. That would be asking a single, 4" long arthritic leg to support about 20-25lbs. I can't ask her to do that.
At this point, I'm clenching my teeth and looking all over the room, trying not to let the vet see that I'm on the verge of losing it. He asked if she had been hit by a car or anything to cause a break like that. I said no, she's never been hit by a car or had any type of injury to her front... just the mysterious bite on her rump when she was young. I mention that she sometimes trips on the stairs or falls because Bella lands on her when she's being an idiot, but other than that, nothing would have happened to her to create an impact. He said that the way it's broken is almost like hitting the "sweet spot" on a car windshield... when a pebble hits at just the right spot to shatter the entire window instantly instead of just cracking it. It's a one in a million shot, but it might have happened. But he has another theory.
There's some gray around her bone in the xray. He says that it's degenerative bone disease, which is not really anything to be concerned about. It happens as dogs get older. But it stays on the outside. It starts showing in old dogs, he says, and usually by the time it's advanced enough to cause bones to break with low impact, the dog has died from natural causes or something else. It takes a long time to get to that point. He says the fact that the bone probably broke from a low impact means there could be something inside the bone making it more brittle.
He recommended getting a biopsy taken for bone cancer if/when we do the surgery.
I
****ing
Lost
It.
I sat there, in the vet's office, hugging my dog and crying. He tried to console me, saying that usually they see some sort of sunburst pattern in the break if it's cancer, but I still couldn't get it out of my head.
And you know, for a few months now, I've been trying to come to grips with the fact that she's not going to be around forever. I know this. And I thought about it a lot, and I had come to accept the fact that one day, Ouija will be gone. I had it under control. But today, knowing that it may be happening sooner than I expected, I just lost it. I've been crying all night. I stop every once in a while.. walk around the house, talk to someone on the phone.. make myself ok. Then I walk past the painting downstairs of her and it all starts welling up again. So I go up to my room to calm myself down. And there she is on the bed. Even though she has a broken elbow, she still wags her tail and does her little army crawl across the covers to get to the edge of the bed and lick my hand... and I lose it all over again.
Tomorrow morning we go and see the specialist. That's when I will know for sure what our options are. I already have some idea of what I'm going to do... if the specialist thinks surgery is a good idea and we should go through with it, I'm calling in every favor and every connection I have and throwing a drift event/car show to raise the funds. So keep an eye out. If the vet doesn't think surgery is a good idea, I will ask about stabilizing it and what the chances are of it fixing itself. I refuse to let them amputate her leg. It would be selfish of me to ask all of that from this dog who has already given me so much... great... here come more tears... But yeah... I'm not gonna ask that of her. I'm hoping that either the specialist will think surgery is a good idea, or can come up with some other idea to stabilize it and let it heal somehow. That's my ideal answer. If it comes back as cancer, again I'm not going to be selfish.
... I can't talk about this anymore. I'm going to go lay down and cry.. and I know that despite being in pain, she will army crawl into my arms and give me her shoulder to cry on.
So I'm in a weather class... we're learning all about why the seasons change, what makes winter, what makes summer, why some winters are colder than other winters, all of that. And now, looking back, it all seems so short...
Our first winter in our new house (1999), it snowed. She was so cute in her little orange and blue tracksuit.
It was a perfectly clear summer day when I sat crosslegged in the grass at our old farm. I was every inch of a gangly, awkward 7th grader (on my way to 8th). She was the pup in my arms... always the reason for my biggest smiles.
It was a hazy fall day when I took the famous (in our family) Audrey Dogburn photo. She was fresh out of a bath, so I tied the towel around her head and put sunglasses on her. She sat while I took a picture.
It was a hot, humid summer at the farm when I took the picture of her chest-deep in the creek... chest deep on her means it was about 4 inches deep.
A rainy winter day gave me the picture of her on the piano.
It was a cool crisp fall morning when I sat on the porch at the farm singing Leaving on a Jetplane to her because I had to fly to New Jersey for my uncle's funeral. After that, every time I left for more than a weekend, I sang that song to her.
Springtime means a red and black mohawk and trips to the UGA rugby pitch.
She taught me the most important things in life. Before she was even a year old, she came back with two puncture wounds on her leg. Something had bitten on her, I still think it was playing too rough with our pit bull. We took her to the vet, and he reached for a muzzle. I gave him a look, he offered the "sometimes dogs bite when they're in pain" excuse. I said "Not this dog" with so much conviction that he believed me. She didn't make a liar out of me. Even when he was pushing, prodding, and running tubes through the injury, she merely sat, shaking. Doing her trademark sigh every once in a while.
She has never made a liar out of me until now. "She's too small to do agility... and not really the type." is what dad said. Two weeks later we went to her first trial. She came in 2nd. "She can't tell the difference between Coke and Diet Coke, can she?" was the question from Melissa. Sure enough, she drank the regular coke and left the diet coke... then followed that with licking the ranch dressing off the lettuce and leaving a perfectly clean piece of lettuce on the floor. Hey, I never said she had the most healthy diet. "Don't you know liquor can be fatal?!" my mother yelled when me and Melissa spilled some on the floor. My mother obviously never watched her lick Bacardi 151 off the pool deck while Mel and I learned the age-old bartender trick of blowing fire. I say she's the best ever, and she lives every single day of her life proving it to me and everyone who meets her. In our 13 years together, she's never made a liar out of me until now.
When surveys on here ask when the last time I cried was, I always retort with my "I don't cry" answer. Because I don't. But today, she has made a liar out of me. She wasn't putting any weight on her right foot, and it was really stiff throughout the leg. That was last night. This morning, it was the same thing, so I called and made an ASAP appointment with the vet. My mind was in a million places about what it could be. The optimist in me said "Maybe she just has a cut on her foot or a sprain or something". The pessimist said "what if something's broken or torn?".
The pessimist was correct.
Her right elbow is broken.
And it's not the kind of break where they can just put a cast and splint on to stabilize it.. it's a break through the joint.
I took a moment to let that settle, took a breath, and asked what our next step is.
A specialist has to see her. Putting it back together involves hardware. Screws, pins, and a small plate.
And a $3000 tab.
But the money was the last thing I cared about.
The other concern with the surgery is that even if they put it back correctly, it will heal with arthritis around it. She already has arthritis. Only the specialist will be able to tell how much worse it will get.
The other option is fusing the joint. She'll have to kind of re-teach herself how to walk, since she will lose mobility in her leg. The vet didn't really have many pros and cons for this option. He said it's best to do the full surgery generally, with fusing being a next-to-last option.
The last option is amputating her leg. But it's not really an option. That would be asking a single, 4" long arthritic leg to support about 20-25lbs. I can't ask her to do that.
At this point, I'm clenching my teeth and looking all over the room, trying not to let the vet see that I'm on the verge of losing it. He asked if she had been hit by a car or anything to cause a break like that. I said no, she's never been hit by a car or had any type of injury to her front... just the mysterious bite on her rump when she was young. I mention that she sometimes trips on the stairs or falls because Bella lands on her when she's being an idiot, but other than that, nothing would have happened to her to create an impact. He said that the way it's broken is almost like hitting the "sweet spot" on a car windshield... when a pebble hits at just the right spot to shatter the entire window instantly instead of just cracking it. It's a one in a million shot, but it might have happened. But he has another theory.
There's some gray around her bone in the xray. He says that it's degenerative bone disease, which is not really anything to be concerned about. It happens as dogs get older. But it stays on the outside. It starts showing in old dogs, he says, and usually by the time it's advanced enough to cause bones to break with low impact, the dog has died from natural causes or something else. It takes a long time to get to that point. He says the fact that the bone probably broke from a low impact means there could be something inside the bone making it more brittle.
He recommended getting a biopsy taken for bone cancer if/when we do the surgery.
I
****ing
Lost
It.
I sat there, in the vet's office, hugging my dog and crying. He tried to console me, saying that usually they see some sort of sunburst pattern in the break if it's cancer, but I still couldn't get it out of my head.
And you know, for a few months now, I've been trying to come to grips with the fact that she's not going to be around forever. I know this. And I thought about it a lot, and I had come to accept the fact that one day, Ouija will be gone. I had it under control. But today, knowing that it may be happening sooner than I expected, I just lost it. I've been crying all night. I stop every once in a while.. walk around the house, talk to someone on the phone.. make myself ok. Then I walk past the painting downstairs of her and it all starts welling up again. So I go up to my room to calm myself down. And there she is on the bed. Even though she has a broken elbow, she still wags her tail and does her little army crawl across the covers to get to the edge of the bed and lick my hand... and I lose it all over again.
Tomorrow morning we go and see the specialist. That's when I will know for sure what our options are. I already have some idea of what I'm going to do... if the specialist thinks surgery is a good idea and we should go through with it, I'm calling in every favor and every connection I have and throwing a drift event/car show to raise the funds. So keep an eye out. If the vet doesn't think surgery is a good idea, I will ask about stabilizing it and what the chances are of it fixing itself. I refuse to let them amputate her leg. It would be selfish of me to ask all of that from this dog who has already given me so much... great... here come more tears... But yeah... I'm not gonna ask that of her. I'm hoping that either the specialist will think surgery is a good idea, or can come up with some other idea to stabilize it and let it heal somehow. That's my ideal answer. If it comes back as cancer, again I'm not going to be selfish.
... I can't talk about this anymore. I'm going to go lay down and cry.. and I know that despite being in pain, she will army crawl into my arms and give me her shoulder to cry on.