Salve for the Aching Heart

As I was talking to my sister in MA last night about poor Jeb (earlier blog), I was reminded that I never posted anything about Abram's and my ride on the Amtrak rails to Beantown over the holidays.

You may remember that Abram is the service dog I am training for Carolina Canines here in Wilmington NC. He was the firstborn out of my Pearl/Max litter and, at 10 months, is stepping up so very nicely to the awesome task of helping someone in a walker or wheelchair. So, when I decided to head north for the holidays to visit my family (instead of staying home alone in a pity party after Gerry and I separated), I realized what a unique and great training experience it would be for Abram.

And it was, indeed...for both of us! Nearly 20 hours each way with the only "grass" pitstop in Washington DC!... Thank goodness that I remembered to manage his fluids and that he doesn't have a teeny-tiny bladder!

The Amtrak folks were MARVELOUS - from the booking agent who issued him his own ticket without me asking, to the conductors who got to know him on the way up and were anxiously looking for him on our trip home because I decided to get on at a later station than our tickets called out.

Of course, when we embarked in Fayetteville mid-afternoon, many eyebrows were raised and I could hear one or two ignorant mutterings of "why does SHE get to bring a dog? there's nothing wrong with HER!", but he was so quiet that most people didn't even see him curled up at my feet between the seats.

By the time we finally disembarked just outside of Boston into a mild snowstorm, we were both ecstatic to be off the train! It was Abram's first experience with snow and my sister Becky worried that he would be cold with his short hair (her dogs were retrievers), but he surprised us all by embracing it. At one point during the 10 days we were there, I actually bought him a sweater, but he would have nothing to do with it after I wrestled him into it the first time.

Of course, everyone fell in love with him because he is such an easily loved guy, everyone that is except one of my sister Sally's dogs (Lucas- a chow rescue, barely visible in the background of the photo), who threatened to kick his butt several times during the course of the week. He pretty much steered clear of him, choosing to spend his time trying to get the other one (Leon - a chow mix rescue) to play instead.

While Christmas shopping one day in the posh new section of the Natick Mall, we got stopped by security for the first time since we started training, to inquire whether he was a helper dog. Once I answered yes, he immediately apologized and walked away mumbling the same into his walky-talky. My sister commented on the fact that no one stopped us until we got into the hoity-toity section LOL.

Our next adventure will be a roadtrip to San Diego later this winter/spring in the RV with mama Pearl and Reba. Feel free to offer us a parking spot for the night on the way out!

Initiation Rite To Avoid

I've been working with Rhodesian Ridgeback Rescue Inc for about a year and a half now and had managed to avoid the situation NO ONE wants to experience and that most rescue coordinators try to avoid placing their foster parents in: the death of a rescue while in your care.

As I understand from several rescue colleagues, many of those situations involve intentional euthanasia because of dog aggression but, occasionally, a terribly, horribly abused dog dies as a direct or indirect result of the abuse it received.

Friday night I felt the pain of the latter when I got the call that sweet Jeb died on the OR table during the amputation of his gunshot leg. Here's what happened...

Thursday night had been worse than Wednesday night, with the painkillers useless against the pain he was feeling. The swelling in his damaged leg had increased all the way down to his ankle and he was obviously in agony. He cried so hard that when he stopped, his voice had a little hiccup in it similar to what a child gets after a long, hard sobbing session. I sat up with him until 5 a.m., talking to him and stroking his head with tears streaming down my face. Finally, I found some earplugs and dozed off in troubled sleep for a few hours with his pitiful moaning/barking in the background several rooms away.

By Friday morning, he would no longer take any food or treat-wrapped meds, and the swelling was even worse. I called my vet in tears and her assistant finally reached the local ortho specialist who agreed to do a consult that day. His crying was pretty much continuous by then.

They are a 24 hour service, although typically only take admissions after 6 p.m. and before 8 a.m. I got there around 10:30 a.m. and we took the crate out of the car there so that he wouldn't be tempted to jump out. He then had to be pulled out and carried because he couldn't find the strength to stand and walk out on his own.

Around 4:30, the attending vet called and gave me the options: try to repair/pin the fracture, which would likely involve a longer recovery period, had unknown prognosis until they could get in there to see the damage but certainty that there would be more than one surgery, or amputate, which would likely immediately relieve much of the pain and have him off restricted activity in a couple of weeks. Since I had already consulted with my rescue colleagues earlier in the day, I quickly opted for the amputation.

She also thought that, while he was in less than optimal condition for surgery bloodwork-wise, trying to get the infection under control that begun to rage again in his grown-over wound would be riskier than the surgery. She told me that she would call me that night as soon as he was out of surgery.

With phone on nightstand to await the post-op call and all dogs (except new puppy) piled on the bed with me, I went to bed early hoping to catch up on sleep I'd missed the previous two nights while comforting him. I had just turned the TV off and flicked off the reading lamp when the phone rang at 7:40 p.m.. "I'm sorry to have to let you know..." she began. He had gone into respiratory failure, followed by cardiac arrest, likely due to blood clots travelling from the wound area.

I can't say I wasn't expecting it in my subconscious, but it still took me by surprise. I thanked her for trying and told her she could stop trying to resuscitate him and let him be at peace finally. Then I sobbed for an hour while I dug down to find the courage to call the various angels who had fallen in love and tried to help him along the way.

How people deal with grief is interesting. Most of the reactions were similar to mine: extreme sadness, but some level of comfort knowing he was no longer in pain and that he had gotten our heartfelt love for the last week. One reaction that perplexed me was umbrage that the vet had done the surgery knowing that his bloodwork was off, notwithstanding the agony he obviously was in.

Today, my birthday, I feel as though I have passed an unavoidable rite of initiation into rescue, one that worried me when I started a year and a half ago, but now strengthens my resolve to do everything I can to keep it from happening again.

I don't mean to sound righteous, but I'll wear the badge of my experience proudly, glad that maybe I made just a small difference in his memory of humans, that we're not all to be feared.

In many ways, Jeb was a gift that helped me grow more than any of the other rescues I fostered and I will accept such a gift again if given the opportunity.

Breaks My Heart

Just when you think life is merrily rolling along and life isn't handing you many lemons, you meet that rescue that makes it all so clear why you do rescue.

Jeb, aka Big Guy, Handsome, Buddy was dropped off with a severe older leg fracture around the first of the year at a night box at a local NC animal control station with a high kill rate. I'm not exactly sure where those statistics are captured (certainly not anywhere on the county websites), but I believe it. There are lots of hunters in this area with all kinds of hounds and, if a dog don't hunt, some of 'em'll drop 'em off, figuring that, when their time runs out, the county can handle the killin' part.

We're not sure what Jeb's story really is beyond finding pellets in the vicinity of the fracture on the X-rays, but we all know of the hunters that have called looking for "dawgs" to hunt boar. While ridgebacks are hounds with a decent prey drive, they above all have a preference for big cats and pack hunting, so it's entirely possible Jeb wasn't getting the job done with possum or birds or boar. But, why shoot him?

So, instead it may be more plausible that he was mistaken for a deer (season just ended here)...

Or maybe he got lost awhile back and had been scavenging some farmer's chickens and got shot, someone found him limping around a few weeks later and dropped him off.

The humanist in me prefers the second scenario, but the realist in me questions why drop him at night?

In any case, he was shot with probably a 20 gauge shotgun in his right flank and it must have been close enough to have enough of an impact to create a very serious fracture. He's adapted fairly well to it (except for the pain) and can get around well enough on the other three legs to take care of business. It may be possible to pin it, but worst case, it will need to be amputated.

There are also shot scars and an embedded pellet on his left side and his rear flanks are characteristic of severe starvation, except for the awful swelling in the fractured leg.

But I digress... So, a Bladen County "shelter friend" gets contacted by whoever she gets contacted by, fosters him for for a couple of days, contacts my rescue organization who ask me yesterday if I have time to check him out since I am closest (under an hour away). When I get there, Krista lays out what they know and what his care has been since he was turned in. Unfortunately, he wasn't prescribed any pain meds until just last week, nor was he generically wormed (only tapeworms). Good news is he is heartworm and erlichia negative.

An "angel" had covered his earlier care and they were going to move him up to Vermont after another "angel", Lynne Swanson DVM of Safe Harbor Farm spay/neuter clinic, took care of neutering and what they thought would be amputation last weekend. Then, when the X-ray offered a glimmer of hope that maybe the leg could be saved and at least be partially functional, Dr. Swanson found another vet with orthopedic expertise who agreed to try the repair.

By now, they've eaten up all the "angel's" donation and have decided he won't/can't go to Vermont but unfortunately, his pre-surgery bloodwork revealed that his red blood cell count was very low, so surgery had to be postponed until it could be raised. That was a week ago, so I took him to Dr. Nusbaum today to have it rechecked and it's still too low. So now he's on B-12 juice, Clavamox (infection in the fracture area), Zubrin (pain and swelling in the fracture area), Panacur (parasites draining RBC) and nowhere near strong enough tramadol (PAIN, PAIN, PAIN).

I'm going to try and make a recording of his piercing cries when the meds aren't kicking in fast enough - he will stand in position until he can't stand anymore, then finally drop to the bed and fall into a troubled half-sleep. He can't speak, but his heart-wrenching cries speak volumes about how much he's hurting.

Oh, to have the satisfaction of hurting he/she who did this to him. Call me old-fashioned in a sense, because I have such a difficult time believing a woman could do this...

Tough Way To Start the New Year

Kelly had her 10 pup litter early, oddly, and we lost all but a female puppy who was born alone about 20 hours after Kelly's membranes ruptured for the first pup, who died 12 hours later. Due to a multitude of missed cues and indecisiveness about when to do the c-section, we didn't discover until after removing the horns that not only had a puppy been blocking the birth canal for some time, but a cyst had apparently burst in her right ovary at some point, causing high white blood cell readings when she was admitted for the surgery and only one fullterm puppy in that horn. She had also had slightly high WBC prior to breeding, so was likely cystic then. In fact, her first litter in 2003 was also somewhat problematic (5 perfect stillborns in a 100% vaginal whelping session) but we attributed it to stress due to excessive temperatures during 1st trimester for two weeks after the Florida hurricane. In light of this, that probably was secondary.

Of course, I went ahead and had her spayed because she would ALWAYS have problems when bred. She loves her family and is doing pretty well as a mother of one so far, attentive and concerned when she hears her crying from her basket. She has her own issues with just having had a c-section, mostly related to pain management. Also likely that her breast milk is "coming in", which has got to be painful due to swelling, since one puppy can't possibly nurse as much as 10.

We've also run into a loose stool issue with the puppy, related to the antibiotics that Kelly is getting, along with everything else she got yesterday that is leaking into the puppy through nursing. We're trying to address it through supplemental feeding but it is important that she be able to nurse to keep Kelly's milk coming in. I haven't slept more than 2 hours for several days now and not at all during the day, although I may try to take a nap this afternoon :o)

Here are two recipes for milk replacers. The first is thanks to Bonita Snodgrass of Bwana Kennel, from her DVM David Dykes. The second is thanks to Diane Jacobsen of Calico Ridge.

In either case, refrigerate and feed by oral syringe slowly onto the back of their tongues. It should be a somewhat thick consistency, which will cause them to suck rather than gulp. You definitely don't want any to go into their lungs. I sit the pup up vertically to avoid same issue.

Weigh pup before and after every feeding – note that puppies should gain approx 10% of their weight daily, especially in first three weeks (while nursing). Serve body temp by rolling syringe between palms. Do not microwave very small amounts because it will COOK fast, which will compromise its effectiveness somewhat and could make it VERY hot.

If you are merely supplemental feeding and a puppy is also nursing, 1 cc per ounce of body weight should enable weight gain. If not nursing, up it to 1 1/2 cc/oz. If you are having problems like me with diarrhea from Mom's antibiotics, make sure your milk replacer is using yogurt or something else that can help adjust the friendly bacteria in the pup's system and make sure you don't overheat it.

Lion Milk
Courtesy of Bwana Kennel, formula by David Dykes, DVM
1 can evaporated milk
1 can water
¼ c plain (fatted - harder to find than you think) yogurt
2T light karo

Blend until smooth. Add cooled, strained broth from 1# boiled liver. (If you have other dogs, mix the liver itself into their kibble over the next few days but only a little to nursing mom - too rich)

DJ Perfect Replacement
Blend together
8oz plain fatted yogurt (can use vanilla in a pinch)
2T regular mayo
2t lt karo
1 egg yolk
can evaporated milk
8 oz water