Circles of Life

This past  Friday my parents' little dog Beau (sometimes called Boby but mostly "Pootie-Poot") went into emergency surgery for his liver shunt.  Yes, the same thing my Lucky has. Beau is Lucky's little brother, 9 months younger.

Sadly, once the doctors got to his liver, they found that he had multiple shunts, both inside and outside. There was no way to fix it.  So they euthanized him right then and there.  My folks and I were heartbroken.

Now, of course,  I'm even more anxious for Lucky.  He has held out longer than Beau did: stayed healthier for longer. But he has the same family background and until we get the tests on the 23rd, there's no way of guessing if his situation will be any better than Beau's.  Just like Beau, he has a lot of fluid in his abdomen, so an ultrasound will likely be inconclusive. But if Lucky can't be saved, I want to take him home and just love him and pamper him for whatever days he has left. I don't want to put him through the surgery if I'm only going to lose him all the earlier for it. I agonize over this, though there's nothing I can do until we get test results and talk with the doctors at OSU. No amount of worrying will change the outcome.

He wouldn't eat yesterday. Just sniffed tiredly at whatever I put in front of him and turned away. Finally, in desperation at the end of the day, I offered him a bowl of Corn Chex, and he ate those, along with a few bites of fresh peach.  Go figure. At least there's food in his little tummy to give him a modicum of energy to keep fighting. I don't know how much longer he can go on that way, though. And every day that passes that he doesn't eat, his condition gets worse and he gets weaker.

There's also the question of the cost, which my folks tell me is likely to be much more than the $3,000 I was quoted, and which I have less than half raised. My folks paid almost $4,000 for Boby's surgery, and lost him anyway.

It's hard knowing that the answer is probably right there:  he's genetically got a definite date with death, or he doesn't. But I can't know yet. Poor Boby was doomed from the start.  I can only hope Lucky is not.

On a less depressing note:  I'm back in the critter care business. Sunday I spent four hours at Wild Heart, doing whatever I could. I helped to give medicines to the herd of little fawns:  17 of them, I think. Then I got to help bottle feed them, though I'm told their appetites are off lately (hence the medication).  I also cleaned up a LOT of deer diarrhea from the little sick fawns. That was less fun.  But toward the end of the day I got to feed a tiny baby bat, no longer than a finger.  You take a teensy 1cc syringe and get a little bead of milk on the tip:  the bat baby then licks up the bead. Adorable.

I tell myself that if some of these wild animals are able to survive the illness, abandonment, or injury they sustain, surely my little Luck dragon is strong enough for this surgery.  Lord, I hope so.