Since Frankie’s death, the chair has gotten little use. The house is also a lot quieter without Frankie and Chez yelling at each other all of the time. Chez must be in the acceptance phase of coping with death because he’s not looking for Frankie anymore.

He wasn’t doing well the evenings before his death. Greg thought he wasn’t going to even make it through the night. He didn’t want to eat and he didn’t attempt to go on walks. He was lethargic, pale, breathing hard. On the evening of the 29th he didn’t want to eat anything and on the morning of the 30th he didn’t eat and refused to eat his tasty pill pockets.

We call around to find a vet who could come over an do an at home euthanasia. We found a doc willing to come out at 5pm. At around 2pm Greg called me at work and said I should probably come home now because he thought Frankie was dying right then. I came home, but the Franken was will alive. Doc came out at around 5:15pm and said he was in heart failure. The euth was quick and easy and put Frankie at rest.

Frankie was such a special guy. We miss him. Last night his arch enemy Chez was wandering around looking for Frankie. Chez and Frankie liked to growl at eachother. Blind Chez would seek out Frankie and make Frankie move. Chester stayed outside most of the night (which is unusual), and Nutok was sad. We’re all sad. Death fucking sucks.

So this really sucks. There’s nothing we can do for Frankie , except wait for his death. I hate death. I hate having to deal with all the deaths of my best friends. Frankie is such a terrific guy and has been such a good friend. Right now he’s on Prednisone and Doxycycline. We just started Terbutaline today. It’s really for asthma and other breathing disorders, but it increases the heart rate, and right now, that’s the goal. Doc said it would cost around $3000 for a doggie pacemaker. We’d have to travel to Seattle. I think it would be too much stress on Frankie, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure if he’s going to make it through the night. I tried to take his heart rate and it’s really slow and irregular– I’m not even sure what I hear. I listened to Bruno’s heart beat to compare. Bruno has a steady healthy beat of around 100bpm– lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, etc. Frankie’s heart beat is just whacked. It’s lower than 50 right now.  I don’t hear any lub, just a loud dub. He’s breathing hard. He’s very pale.

Dutchess

Yeah, I know Dutchess is spelled incorrectly– but I like it like that. Brought Dutchy to the vet last weekend due to a limp. The doc spotted her distended abdomen. Either she has bad gas or cancer. We’re guessing cancer since she already had two malignant tumors removed from her neck. She has a lump on one of her nipples. Regarding the limp, doc thought she has some type of shoulder injury. Regarding the bloat, we’ve put her on metronidazole. If the bloat/gas doesn’t clear up then it’s all downhill from here. Unlike Frankie, Dutchy is still interested in eating and going on walks. Boths dogs are quite lethargic. Frank only ate a bit of his breakfast and a bit of his dinner. He didn’t even try to go on a walk tonight.

:(

Just for kicks, he’ll get an echocardiogram tomorrow. Perhaps the echo will tell us what’s causing the problem. Another treatment we can try is doxycycline and steroids. More tomorrow after the cardiac echo.

After looking all summer, in what can be accurately described as an all-out search, we got definite news of Sam’s death on August 21. Someone down the road, who Ilana spoke to during the search, found her remains and returned her nametag and a section of her collar. We still don’t know what really happened (and I have looked several times in the area, winter & summer, but not found any other sign). Our best guess is she was caught in an unattended trap or otherwise stuck. This was all just 3 miles or so from our home, but in a very difficult area (swampy, off the trails, tussocky). RIP Sam.

We brought him to the vet with his sister Stubby. Ex-rays showed he had some type of foreign body in his stomach, but it didn’t look like an obstruction. This is the first time ever that we actually saw something in an ex-ray of a dogs’ stomach. Normally an ex-ray is taken and then we hear, “we’ll the ex-ray is inconclusive.” This time we saw the little chunks of whatever just hanging out in his stomach. The vet surmised that it was either pieces of bone or plastic. The doc also noted arthritis in his back.

She gave him a shot of buprenorphine for pain and recommended tramadol if he appeared painful in the upcoming days. She also gave us Cerenia (I’ve never heard of this before), which is an anti-nausea drug for dogs. We switched his food temporarily to Hills w/d and are giving him some canned pumpkin with his canned food.

He showed immediate improvement the next day, however, he still seems a little glum. With 11 dogs living inside, it’s difficult to determine who’s poop is who’s (no– they don’t poop in the house, we have a dog door and they poop outside, usually); and we haven’t identified any foreign objects in any poop, so we aren’t sure if whatever is in his tummy has actually passed.

Stubby also visited the vet. Stubby has been randomly yelping and we can’t figure out where the pain is coming from. The vet couldn’t figure it out either and recommended we continue to give her rimadyl and not take her on walks. She thought it was possible neck pain. The morning after her vet visit, Stubby woke up in a lot of pain and jumped on the bed where she tensed her entire body and shook for a couple of minutes. We’ll give her another week and if she’s still exhibiting the same symptoms we’ll bring her back in. Stinkypup diagnosis is she has an abscess we can’t see, or she’s having arthritic pain.

Update June 10 (Greg): He’s feeling better. Maybe it was all a ploy to get canned food for a week. There was no sign of what was stuck in his gut.

Storm ran off to chase the moose, as did Frankie and Nutok.  The dogs attached to me decided to run after them too, and got all tangled in a tree. They’re very strong when they want to be, so the started pulling very hard and slamming me into a tree. Soon the leashes were totally tangled. I saw that Chester was attempting to eat his leash to get free (he’s very talented) and pulled him toward me. As I got one dog toward me, another would lunge forward. Chester eventually ate his leash and ran free. After he was gone, I slammed into the tree couple of more times and then managed to untangle everyone.

After I got home, I unleashed Stubby, Bruno, and Chez, and corralled Neptune, Duchess, Magic and Decker into the yard. I went back to look for the missing dogs. I found Storm where the commotion happened. She was barking at a Momma moose and her baby. They were so big and cute and hairy! Storm came to me and I leashed her. Frankie, Chester, and Nutok soon came running along and I ran with them to our house.

When I opened the gate to let the delinquents in, Stubby decided to attack Storm and as I was breaking up the fight Bruno ran out. He ran up and down the street and I pounced him and caught him.

Once everyone was inside, I counted everyone.  They were all there and all safe.

Ah, spring time in AK is moose season! I should have known a moose was hanging around because Chester jumped the fence this morning.

At around 1pm I started practicing for the snoozkon quest and was reading my book on the couch getting ready for a nap. Greg went for a run with Chester at 3pm. It was then that the outside dogs started barking. Eventually I got up and looked out side. Everything was fine.  I figured they were barking at Greg and Chester. The barking started again and I looked out the window to see a couple of teams go by. I figured this is why they were barking. After non-stop barking, I got up and looked outside. I saw Luke running around the wheel. I must have watched him run around twenty times– it was very amusing. I didn’t see anyone out of their kennel.

At around 5pm I went out to soup the dogs before going for a mush. I got to Higgs’ pen and saw him laying there. I knew he was dead– Higgs wasn’t the type of dog to take a nap. He got very excited when we were in the yard. I ran inside to get Greg; Went back outside to let Peetie and Rocket out of the pen, and said my goodbyes to Higgs. Greg came out.  It was a very sad moment. Eventually Greg checked to see if Higgs was frozen to the ground. His body wasn’t, but his tongue was. He got a shovel to loosen the snow around his tongue and picked Higgs up (around 65 lbs) and carried him to the truck. He’ll stay their tonight until we bring him to Dr. May’s to be cremated.

As a side note, we saw Susan Vega last night and she told the story of her parent’s sending her childhood cat down the east river in a viking funeral. I thought we could do this for Higgs– tie him to a sled, set it on fire, and send him down a hill. For some reason, Greg didn’t think he was viking enough.

Higgs was a goofy guy. He liked to try to escape from the dog yard, especially when his brother Asa was alive. He was a working dog until around 8 years old, and was a very strong part of the team. His last two years he didn’t run. We always new he’d have a heart attack, but I wasn’t really prepared for a sudden death. His brother Asa died last year, Feb. 17th– they are together now. Running and playing and being two pups in a pod.