It’s always a sad day at StinkyPup when we lose a friend. On Sept. 24, 2024, we said goodbye to Medusa.
Unlike most of our dogs, who we adopt when they are older, we adopted Medusa (and her littermates Siren and Kraken) when they were 2 months old. Their parents were from Mackey/Forsberg lines, so we called them the Mackeys.
This group of three was very bonded. I remember one of our first runs with them when they were yearlings. We were running on a trail that paralleled Chena Hot Springs road in Fairbanks, and I needed to stop to fix a tangle. All three decided to wiggle out of their harnesses and run around while I was frantically trying to get them back. Like her brother Kraken, Medusa wasn’t the greatest sled dog and didn’t like to run more than 20 miles. As it turned out, the reason why was that she had hip dysplasia. We didn’t find this out until we moved to L’Amable. We took her to the vet for not eating and thought that she had obstructive bowel– but the x-ray revealed hip dysplasia. That ended her running career, and she became an inside dog.
For the last year, Medusa has been a very picky eater. She didn’t like eating in the morning. The vet didn’t know why. I’d feed her boiled chicken when she wouldn’t eat her kibble. A week before she died, she wouldn’t eat chicken, so I broke out the sardines and rice. This worked for a day or so, and then she stopped eating again. She developed mucous in her eyes (which she’s always had, but this was bad), and crusty black dried snot in both nostrils, which caused her to whistle.
We were able to get a vet appointment (not as timely as we would have liked– I even asked if I could bring her in for a drop-off appointment, but the vet’s office said “No” because they were too busy.) We saw Doc. S., and she said Medusa had very bad dry eye. This sounded like an easy fix to me. She prescribed eye drop antibiotics and another drop (which they didn’t have in stock). She also prescribed prednisone.
Medusa ate like a champ on the 1st day of prednisone. Then she stopped eating. I knew that this was bad– dogs eat on pred. We decided the next step was bloodwork.
On Sept. 24, I brought her in for bloodwork. The night before, I felt that she was shutting down, because she wouldn’t eat her fish fillet and was curled in a ball outside. The bloodwork was bad– but the vet tech told me it had clotted and they wanted to run it again. The second was bad, but not as bad as the first. Doc. S. was in surgery and relayed a message that the next step was ultrasound. Doc. M. was available that afternoon to perform the ultrasound.
Doc. M. and I have a good relationship, and before he started with the ultrasound, I asked him if we should be doing this, and he said “No. Not with bloodwork like this.”
I called Greg and we made the decision to say goodbye to Medusa.
After the euthanasia, I remembered there were two sets of bloodwork. I panicked that the Doc looked at the wrong one, but the vet tech said he looked at both.
It’s been almost one month since we said goodbye and every day I look for my friend, but she’s not here.
Rest in peace Medusa.