Damn Dog

10-8-13

Damn dog.

Lycos isn’t sure what she wants to do. I came home yesterday with big plans on cleaning and packing and instead I found myself comforting my tweaked dog.

She was lying down, but something wasn’t quite right. It was in the way she was holding her head. It looked crooked. I went over, assuming she had simply fallen and had been stuck. It was more than that. I tried to help her up, but she was even stiffer than normal. She couldn’t stand. Her whole body would roll over when we tried. Her balance was shot. When I turned her over, she curled up in an awkward way that was clearly not something she was trying to do.

She had pissed herself and I also discovered a pile of semi loose poo by her. It was not a good scene. I quickly texted Ken to come home from Steve. He was there shockingly quick. He also assessed the situation and it was pretty clear; Lycos had suffered a stroke. Her eyes were twitchy and he body was just a crumpled mess.

We called Dr. Steinam’s office in order to make arrangements. We assumed this was game over. She is 13 and a half, and has been getting increasingly worse. We knew this day was coming. We decided to go get the kids and then we could go over to the office. Luna came with us.

We arrived at Steve when I got the call from Kathy at Dr. Steinam’s. Apparently they had recently lost Dr. Wang so they were kind of swamped. We would not be able to come until 5:30. No problem. Lycos was not having difficulty breathing and if anything, she looked ok enough to just rest. We brought her inside.

I had 15 minutes before I had to go get the boys. Apparently Lycos heard the phone calls and she decided she wasn’t ready.

Over the course of those 15 minutes, she decided to work towards getting up. It was slightly comical at first since she was still suffering from the balance issues, but she got up with some help and then trotted in a drunken stagger to the door. We let her out and she walked over to the lawn and peed. She seemed pretty normal at this point. What the hell, dog?

When I looked up her symptoms online, it looked like not only was this kind of episode common for old dogs, it was common in lab dogs. Plus, it was something that dogs do often bounce back from. It certainly doesn’t mean they won’t have this happen again, nor does it mean she isn’t nearing the end of her days. It just means she isn’t in Death’s waiting room. She is just out in the parking lot.

We called back and canceled the emergency visit and Ken is going to keep an eye on her today. She ate fine last night and thankfully we were able to find Lion, her beloved toy from when she was a tiny pup. She looked ok this morning. Of course, perhaps she is just fucking with us.

Bobby has forbidden me from giving him any more bad animal news right after school. I am totally ok with this since I am tired of giving bad animal news.

The Lycos adventure did take me out quite a bit. Ken took the boys to practice, much to Bobby’s chagrin. He was pretty pleased when I had made arrangements for him not to go when we thought we had a dog emergency on our hands. Instead, they made it through their homework in enough time and with Lycos being better, it seemed appropriate to go. Dax was thrilled since all he wants to do these days is play soccer.

So much for a relatively quiet week.