Looks innocent enough, doesn’t he? This is Meriwether. He came to us in a box from Canada–in exchange for $500. He’s a piebald husky and after our last piebald husky died on the day our son was born my husband had been in mourning. Seriously. It was rough on him. So, being weak and kind of occupied with you know recovering from an emergency C-section and getting no sleep I agreed to purchasing the little darling pictured above.
He is without a doubt the most obnoxious dog I have ever met. He yells at me 24/7. He is obsessed with bread, especially bagels and also has a freakish love of apples. He also has food allergies–chicken and rice. That’s right, chicken and rice. Do you know what dog food without chicken or rice costs? Let’s just say this dog eats well. And finding out he was allergic wasn’t pleasant–it involved a lot of throwing up (on his part) in the middle of the night.
After we sorted that out, he ate a Barbie toy, got a blockage (of course) and had to have surgery. He recovered from that and gave my other dog (an Australian shepherd/German shepherd mix named Sherman) an infection of his spinal chord. Sherman recovered from that (more doggie fluids places you don’t want to see them), and Meriwether had a seizure. More expense, no repeats, life goes on.
Then a few months ago while out for a jog something happened–or worsened. At the time I had been noticing that Meriwether had been falling a lot which seemed odd. But what happened on our jog left no doubt something was wrong. Halfway through, he could barely walk. We crept back home. It was a Saturday so we waited a couple of days thinking he pulled something and took him to the vet.
This started a new round of vet visits, specialists, hearing he could have cancer, preparing my children, crying…you’ve probably been there. We decided because of the massive expense, the zero guarantee they could help him and the fact he would have to suffer, to just put him on prednisone and see what happened. If it was inflammatory disease it would help. If it was cancer, it would make his life better while the end came.
Basically we waited…and waited. We carried him in from outside, my husband carried him up to bed everynight. And everyday or say group of three days he seemed a little better, but not a lot. He didn’t die, but he didn’t get back to normal either.
So, there we were…what to do? At our regular vet’s suggestion, off to a new specialist. This time they threw out possibilities like a slipped disc or bacteria infection–things we might be able to fix. So, we okayed the expense of a full body work up including an MRI. Somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000.
They did the MRI today. And what did they find…nothing. He looks fine, healthy even. The spinal tap results aren’t back yet. We’ll get them later today, but for now it appears we are right where we were $3,000 ago. No idea what is wrong and nothing to do but give him prednisone and hope he keeps getting better.
So, there you have it, my reason you won’t be seeing me at Pasic, or RWA, or RT and why we probably won’t have a big family vacation either. But maybe, just maybe we will still have Meriwether.
And he looked pretty sad too with the strange patch-like shavings. The picture below shows the spot on the base of his skull. He has one on his leg and the base of his tail too. Then the stomach…but that’s pretty obvious.
Zombie Moon
