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.

:(

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.

So that’s that. Now we know. Very sad.

This is approximately where Sam was found in relation to our house.

We believe that Sugar’s hip problems were caused at least partially by being a wheel dog in an earlier life, before we got her, with a traditional X-back harness. Such harnesses tend to put downward pressure on a dog’s rear, and this is worsened in the wheel position where the sled is lower than the gangline, and there are more jerks and bumps. We got Sugar as one of our first kennel rescue dogs. She was part of the sled team for a few years, but then made the transition to inside. One interesting thing is that while outside, she had persistent urinary problems — to wit, she’s peed in her dog box, resulting in many winter experiences chopping the frozen piss out of her box (embedded in straw, stuck to the wooden box). Nasty. But when she moved in, this immediately stopped. She did lose most bowel control over the past year or so, but not urinary.

We were away in Denali for a couple of nights, and upon return found that she had not stood for 2 days, and barely ate (our dog sitter should have called us to tell us this, but did not). We took her to the emergency vet, since one of our favorite vets was on duty. We decided to euthanize her that night, since there was no clear sign of why she had the sudden “crash,” but we didn’t think it was fair to do more testing and treatments, since she had been through so much.

Scully was a super sled dog, but kept getting beat up, especially by Pumpkin and Monkey. We moved her inside after a particularly nasty set of injuries, and she lived inside happily for a few years. One particularly valuable role is alarm clock for Ilana, helping with bits, paws and barks when it was time to get up and go for a walk.

Asa is a very difficult dog to catch, so we’ve been leaving him free to roam in the dog yard. Monday the 16th, I went for a short 7 mile mush and Asa followed us, sometimes running behind us, sometimes in lead; he was having a great time. On our last stretch before home we encountered a neighbor who is known for having “alligator” dogs. An alligator dog is a dog who attacks a passing team.

As soon as we encountered the team, they pounced Asa. My neighbor managed to get his dogs off of Asa, I passed with my team and saw that Asa looked okay (no blood, he was running) and then stopped to see if his team was okay.  His responded, “your dogs passed on the wrong side! That’s why this happened.” I immediately took off and thought, “What a jerk! His dogs attacked mine, I stopped to help, and he’s yelling at me.”

When we got home, I couldn’t catch Asa to check him out, but he appeared to be happy and healthy. He may have had a slight limp.

—

The next night I took the “A” team out for a 12 mile run. I didn’t want to take Asa as a free runner because I wanted Chester to go, and I didn’t want to have two loose dogs. At the last moment, right before I was ready to leave the yard, I caught Asa. Greg put him on his chain.

I told Greg he should go ahead and have a party (meaning let the remaining dogs off), and I’d catch the ones he can’t catch (Simba and Rattles) when I came home. When I got home  and brought my team into the yard, I saw Simba and Rattles running around. Simba had a scratch on his snout and there was some blood in the snow.  I found Asa hiding in a private section of the dog yard and he had been beaten up quite badly, but not as bad as we have seen. We brought him inside, and decided that he didn’t have to go to the ER vet and we’d bring him for stitches in the morning.

The next morning, we dropped Asa off at our vet. I mentioned that Asa was Higgs’ brother, and it would be interesting to see if Asa had the same heart condition as his Higgs. One of the docs listened to his heart and said, “Nope. Asa’s heart is steady and strong. It’s nothing like Higgs’ rhythm.”

Around 1pm I got a call from the vet. “Hi, this is Dr. xxxxxx.”
I said, “Hi. How’s Asa?”
He said, “We lost him.”
I responded, “Okay.”
He said, “No, it’s not okay.”
He started to explain what happened and I was in too much shock to listen, so I told him I’d call him back. I tracked Greg down at work, and we drove to the vet’s office.

None of us know what really happened. The vet himself was surprised. They had given Asa some anesthesia. He began to wake up. They gave him a different type of anesethia…the gas kind. He was on a heart monitor. Everything was fine and the doc was almost finished, “two stitches from being done,” and Asa’s heart stopped. They couldn’t revive him.

Asa, we miss and love you!

Asa (left) and his brother Higgs

I’m writing this because Scully is in bad shape again (and Dutchess just started yelping).  Two weeks ago Scully started to crash. Greg brought her to Mt. McKinley on a Sunday (McKinley is the only open vet on the weekend). The vet wasn’t sure why Greg brought her in, but told us to give her the antibiotic amoxicillian for infection.  Not wanting to be a hypochondriac momma, I waited around five days to see if the amoxi had any effect. Nope. I brought her to Aurora a few days early for her biweekly hematocrit check– which was 20%. The vet tookex-rays to see what was going on in her gastrointestinal track. The ex-rays were inconclusive. I brought her back the next day for an ultrasound. The ultrasound told us that there was something either on her spleen or intestines. I brought her back the next day (Friday, Dec. 11) for surgery (note to self– never have major surgery on a Friday, when the vet is closed on the weekend), with the understanding that if it was a tumor on her intestines, we wouldn’t wake her up. If it was on her spleen, she’d get a splenectomy.

I was quite happy to hear that he had splenectomy and didn’t have to die. Scully had a 5″ tumor on her spleen. Apparently one theory of hemolymic anemia is that it is caused by a failing spleen.

Scully isn’t doing to well, she’s eating very little, can’t walk, and looks miserable.  Greg keeps reminding me that she’s in post-operative mode and she just had major surgery.  She has a vet appt. tomorrow to check her Hematocrit.

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Duchess has been yelping all weekend.  She’s the girl who has had two tumors removed from her neck, as well as mammary cancer removed a year ago.

I’m preparing for Scully and Duchess, by practicing singing Silent Night.  I hope it doesn’t  come to that, but it’s always good to be prepared.

I was working from home on Tues. and decided to give Buckwheat a bath. He was so incredibly stinky– smelled like he was rotting from the inside (and he probably was).  I didn’t have dog shampoo, so created a mixture of Apple Cider vinegar, a teaspoon of lemon, some olive oil, and a huge bucket of water. I gave him a sponge bath on the porch.

Later in the day, I told Storm that she can move inside when Buckwheat was gone.

When Greg came home, we went for our evening walk with the inside dogs. I noticed Buckwheat just wasn’t doing well. I said to Greg, “I think it’s almost time for the Buck-a-r00.” Immediately after my comment,  Buckwheat collapsed. Greg carried him home.  Indeed the time had come.

We usually have our dogs euthanized at home because it’s more peaceful and less stressful for the dog and ourselves.  I was unable to get a hold of our house-call vet. I drove Buckwheat into town to the After Hours Clinic. After filling out the paperwork, Buckwheat and I sat on the floor of the emergency room. I was waiting for the usual doc to come in, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that the doc on call was my old (not in age) vet, Dr. Pinto!!!! Pinto had moved away years ago and had happened to be in town for the week and thought she’d work a couple of shifts at the clinic.  She had euthanized several of my dogs before she moved away. I couldn’t have asked for anyone else (except for Dr. Rose) to be the vet doing the deed.

The euth went smoothly. I told Buckwheat to say hi to his brothers (Levi & Bandit) and sister (Darla). I feel a little guilty not getting Buckwheat back in a little box; I opted for a group cremation.

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As a side note, the pink stuff that they use to euth animals is Beuthanasia and the blue stuff is Fatal Plus. I was trying to think of the names because Pinto used the pink stuff and I was used to seeing the blue stuff.

Ilana finally got Spot into a portable cat kennel and sped off to the vet. Spot was not very responsive, and seemed to have a broken back. She called me from the car, and I met her at the vet. Spot’s back wasn’t broken, but she had severe internal trauma and the vet recommended we euthanize her immediately. So, we did.

Spot was about 12 years old, and had lived with us since North Carolina. We knew she was in danger with so many dogs in the house, but did not have any good placement options for her. It was a sad day, to see pet dogs turn to their primal instincts.