I had to take dog2 to the vet today as he had a gunky eye. I took the Lotster along to show her off to the staff - two vet nurses and two vets came out to 'ooh' and 'aah' over her. Later the vet took some blood from her and they checked it for the renal by-products urea and creatinine. Three weeks ago both of those were four times higher than the highest normal level - she was in acute kidney failure. Today they were both well within normal range. The vet said she'd come as close to dying as she could have. Yet there she was, bright-eyed and stubbornly trying to leave the surgery.
Her bacterial culture came back 'empty', so it looks like the urinary bleeding was not caused by an infection. What it was caused by we'll probably never know. The vet thinks that the attempt by the specialist vet to do a biopsy possibly caused more bleeding and a blockage which sent the kidneys into a tailspin, but somehow it all got unblocked. I think some of the anti-inflammatory and then sedative and antibiotic drugs were partly to blame. Whatever, her will to live and our will for her to stay alive must have had something to do with it, I think, if I'm not being too gooey.
People come out with a lot of platitudes when a dog is old and ill, about "treasured companions" and so on. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for those, but somehow they don't come near to capturing what the Lotster has meant to us. It's a unique two-way relationship, she's a unique physical and mental presence in our lives.
Here's a short video of her, aged 13 and a half, one week after her near-death experience, gambolling into the holiday house.
That is truly amazing. Go Lottie!!
Posted by: Valerie | Sunday, February 04, 2007 at 07:05 AM
Zeke of Creek Running North has just died. I was going to do a short thing linking to it, so looked again just now, but his blog appears to be down. My guess is that the number of commenters has crashed the server.
What a good dog he was.
Posted by: Helen | Sunday, February 04, 2007 at 10:05 PM