05.02.08

It’s been a woo-hoo week

Posted in dogs, woohoo! at 2:13 pm by wendy

First, good news:

although I’d been playing the odds and wasn’t really worried.

But it’s good to know for sure that the cat that sank its needle fangs through your heavy jeans and deep into your calf muscle while its claws mauled your hand in a frenzied ball of muscle, bone and very pointy, pointy rage was not afflicted with a disease that will slowly eat your brain.

The rest of that story, and this week, has not been so woo-hoo, although it all ends well depending on your perspective.

I came home the Thursday night before the Seattle/Vancouver trip after dropping Nick off at work and heard the dogs making a horrible sound in the back yard. This house has a front yard fenced with chain link and a back yard that wraps around the house in a U shape with seven foot high wooden planks. It’s a great fence. The dogs have unlimited access to that yard through a doggy door from the house. There’s a shed on one side. The noise was coming from the shed side.

Recently, I’d noticed that there was a little area of digging under the fence on the shed side, and I’d plugged it up with stone and log, but when I came home I could hear sounds like fighting, and not sounds I recognised as coming from our dogs.

I rushed in afraid I’d find the neighbors dog in our yard, killing or being killed. The air was full of red dust that billowed over the fence, and when I got through the gate I just saw a very excited Crivens and Belu.

And a cat.

This has never happened before.
We’ve had cats come in our yard before, because it seems there’s nothing offleash outdoor cats like more than POPP (pooping on other people’s propery), but they’ve always got out before the dogs got to them, and the dogs come rushing headlong barking like idiots, like it’s a game and giving plenty of warning.

But somehow, this cat got caught.

The girls had apparently been chasing it around the shed, and nipping it when they could get close enough. There were some tufts of fur and claw marks from the bitches’ claws scrabbling on the cement pad in front of the shed.

Later, I saw a board of the fence had been split from someone throwing their body against it with such force.

Whether the sound I heard when I came home was them reacting against each other getting in the other’s way or teamwork excitement against the cat, I don’t know. I couldn’t grab the dogs, because when I grabbed one, the cat ran and the other chased it, so we ended up in a narrow part between the fence and the shed, Belu on one side, Crivvie on my right, and the cat underneath my wide stance, frozen and watching Belu.

I had my hands out, warning the dogs off, but they were so excited that grabbing either one would have started it all again, and the cat running. So we just stayed frozen for a moment and had a little breather.

With the way the cat was staring at Belu, I thought I had a chance, if I was quick enough, to scruff it and just toss it over the neighbor’s fence.

(I know, I know. Stupid, optimistic, ignorant of the physics. So like a girl. ;))

Then it would be over and I could check the dogs and find the cat and see if it needed to be taken to the emergency vet. If I could just scruff it and toss it quick enough.

I wasn’t quick enough.

I lunged to scruff it, and Crivvie took my dropped hand as opportunity to try to get another nip in, and while she didn’t make it past the barrier of my leg, suddenly I had this sharp and pointy feline ball of muscles, bone, and fur frenziedly savaging my leg and hand.

I couldn’t help it, it really hurt and was such a shock; I cussed. Really, really loud. I believe I screamed, “Motherf—er!”

Now, I know my conversation is really salty when I’m with a peer group, but I really do try to not cuss so people who aren’t part of the conversation and have no choice in the matter will have to hear it. I recognise that cussing is neither clever or necessary. And the people next door have three kids. So, even louder, I immediately apologised, although in retrospect I realise that had any of them been home, they probably would have made their presence known earlier, given the ruckus level.

I tried to get away from this cat that had latched itself onto me with such ferocity and eventually it unstuck itself and launched from my hand and leg to a tree right next to us. The mad thing sprinted up the tree trunk and then stopped there. Only four feet off the ground. Hissing and spitting. And pretty much right in front of Crivvie’s face.

(Now here I stop to give props to my girls for not biting me during any of this, even when the cat was this crazy ball attached to my leg. Even when I got between them and the cat, even when I body-checked them away from it and ruined the round and round the shed pursuit. I think they were as surprised by the furry ball of cat attacking my leg as I was. They were watching mostly during all of this with that happy dopey “ain’t this a fun game!?!” look on their faces, like the cat was just this amazing new toy.)

So here’s this cat in front of Crivvie’s face and it’s looking at me like it is going to launch itself onto my head if I just move: it’s growling go ahead punk and make my day and staring at me like it will eat all my future generations from my womb right now, just make a move.
So Crivvie bounces and nips it on the butt.
The cat launches and it’s another round of around the shed we go, but I managed to block the dogs and the cat gets enough lead and goes underneath the storage shed.

I pick up Belu and shove her into the front yard and go back for Crivens. I go into the house and Tahoe greets me with his wide-eyed “what the f— is going on?” look. I am so relieved he stayed out of it. By now he knows full well that he is their whipping boy and he probably would have taken more damage from them in the excitement than the cat. I put the panel over the doggy door so they can’t go out in the back yard anymore and the cat can just go home on its own time with no launchpad help from me.

I call Nick and let him know what happened and I let the girls in. They check the flap, Tahoe goes out in the front yard. No kitty.

Since I have to go to the emergency room, and based on my last experience at one, (see “Weekend Hangover” at the old blog) I rounded up my knitting, my ipod and headphones, and a new book, and washed out my wounds with antiseptic before securing the dogs inside and checking underneath the shed with a flashlight to check if the cat was still there.

Yep, still there. Awake, upright, toward the entrance of the shed and still extremely ticked off.

I knocked on the neighbors door but they weren’t home. I went to the emergency room, and beheld the miracle of our small town: admitted, seen, treated and released and back at home with a prescription filled at the local Rite Aid within an hour. Amazing.

The neighbors came home and I went over to talk to them and they said the cat wasn’t theirs but a stray that was always going underneath their house. I asked them to keep an eye out for it, and if they could get close enough to see if it needed to go to the vet, I would take it to the emergency vet in Medford.

We kept the dogs out of the back yard all night and the next morning. I checked under the shed with the flashlight and the cat was still there, but dead. This was very upsetting. The night had been down to the thirties, and the idea of dying underneath someone’s garden shed, alone and in the cold…just sucks.

I dug underneath the shed a bit and hooked it with a hula ho, and Nick came out and pulled it out. We put the cat in a box and I called Animal Control and left a message relating the bite situation and the body and asking what I should do. There were no apparent injuries on the cat’s body except for a scrape missing some fur, something I wouldn’t have taken even our dogs to the vet for, so I was a little worried.

By the afternoon, I hadn’t heard back from Animal Control, so I called the County and was told to bring the body to them right away. They took it and noted the time of the bite and told me the lab would test it right away and they’d let me know. And a week later, there’s the letter, so hooray! I’m rabies free! We knew earlier though, because Nick had been more worried than I was and badgering them nearly daily for news.

So, we don’t know what killed the cat. Maybe it died of shock, maybe the dogs got in more than just nips, who knows?

It is terrible that they apparently killed a cat.
We got relatively lucky though.

The girls had minor wounds, either from the cat or from each other, and given the strength and length of tooth and nail of all involved and the thin skins, we got lucky. I had huge horse pills of Amoxicillin, and no ill effects from the wounds. Maybe I would have been fine without the massive doses that gave me a killer headache for much of the next week, but I figure internet friends and their SOs exist to provide cautionary tales.

So the other weird suckage with a woo-hoo relief of an ending is:

(”Let me explain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up:”
Libélula fell.
Libélula went blind and couldn’t walk on her own.
Libélula is fine now.
Read on if you want dull details. If you came in for spinning and knitting, sorry. There’s sort of a reference to that at the end paragraph, but really, it’s kind of lip service and probably not worth the effort of scrolling. Again, sorry.)

Monday night I was talking to my Dad on the phone, folding and putting away the laundry, and all the dogs were on the bed watching me. I was in the closet and I heard the thumpy-smack sound of someone falling out of bed.

It was Belu, and she emerged from behind the bed with her filthy fuzzy ball in her mouth, which she’d had on the bed earlier, so I figured she was okay.

But since she hurt her shoulder the week we moved up here (mid-February) and keeps reinjuring it and limping off and on all this time and we’ve even been to the vet and had it x-rayed just to be safe because it has been taking so long to heal and are anxious that she just get better already so we can go out and do some stuff for crying out loud but the vet says no leashed walks outside even, I asked her to walk to me so I could see if she was limping.

She wasn’t limping, but something wasn’t right.

She dropped the ball and started spinning, like she was trying to bite a fly on her bottom but forgetting to keep her back end in the same place. She teetered, she nearly fell. She seemed just unbalanced so I tried to make her walk along more and she was staggery and inconsistent.

I walked her along the hallway guiding her with my hands because she was so uncoordinated and into the living room and she launched herself into the blue chair (her chair and throne of comfort) but needed help to get her back end up. I looked at her face and she seemed unable to focus on me, and one eye seemed lolled out in a direction opposite to the other and I could see a bit of the white. I took my keys and shook them in front of her face to the left and she jerked her head like they were behind her and to the right. She couldn’t focus on them, couldn’t focus on me, and I realised she couldn’t see.

I frankly freaked.

I called our nearest emergency vet, now 50 miles away in Medford and let them know we were coming in (this was 10.30pm). I wasn’t thinking and I grabbed her collar off the table (everybody got baths that day) and the idiot greyhound got so excited that I put Libélula outside on the lawn so she wouldn’t get knocked about, and so she could pee before the trip. I grabbed a leash and my wallet. I put her in the back of the car and drove like a bat out of hell north.

But driving up, I really regretted putting her in the back and wished she was in the passenger seat where I could put my hand on her and let her know it was okay. I was so afraid she was bleeding in her brain and might die on the way and I’d get there and open up the back and find out she died somewhere out there while I was driving, alone in the back. I talked to her but I wasn’t sure how well she could really hear or understand.

They kept her overnight for observation and treatment with a diuretic that should have helped any swelling in the brain come down if that’s what she had. No MRIs or CTs in an emergency for dogs, just wait and see.

The vet wasn’t sure it’s from hitting her head. She threw up in the car and pooped, which she hasn’t done since she was a teeny awful puppy. He was leaning toward epilepsy (which is certainly seems like the aftermath of, except she’s never had any seizures before, no family history that we know of, and if she’d had a seizure while all of them were on the bed, I think the other dogs would have let me know by their reactions) or a tumor or best case scenario that it is a head injury that the overnight treatment will help despite the lack of bruising or head sensitivity.

But her head was still numb/unresponsive on the left side when I had to leave her there that night–which seemed better than the panicked moments before we left our house, when she couldn’t seem to see me at all and not be able to sense direction of sound or control her balance. (She walked into things! My baby girl!) In fact, she actually seemed improved and more like herself when I left, but still uncoordinated.

I HATED leaving her, and she hated being left.

I worried about not knowing what was really wrong, that the stress for her may be worse than anything.

I called for an update at three a.m. and Libélula was doing better. They did one treatment of the Mannitol and while she still didn’t have sight in the left eye and lacked some sensitivity on that side, her coordination and demeanor had improved to the point they felt it important to just wait and see and not risk an overdose (she has a mild heart murmur) with more treatment since they had seen some improvement. Still wobbly and logey but better. Her blood panel came back clear, just concentrated (a little dehydrated).

We got a call at 7am that Libélula was a lot better and that they’d pretty much done what could and should be done there, that there were no seizures and each walk and function test had been better, and she was pretty much a whippet again. Still wasn’t so great on the left side though with the vision or coordination.

We drove up and got her and yep, just as described, much more “with it” and like our baby girl usually is–it sucks to have to leave her, but the joy of seeing each other again is kind of ridiculously awesome, she is as close to pure love and happiness as it gets. We sat down on the floor and she climbed up into Nick’s lap and up his chest and gave him fierce ear-lickies and we had to kind of help her to not knock herself over.

She also seemed to really like the vet, (Dr. Ricardo Izarry, Southern Oregon Veterinary Specialty) she kept checking back with him and wagging, which was nice to see because before it has always been “thank goodness! Mommy! Daddy! Let’s get the heck out of here!” and no looking back.

Since she had no seizures that night (or since) I don’t think it was an epileptic fit. I am thinking that the pooping and vomiting in the car was a prize combo of unfinished business from the yard, stress from being alone in the car without her dog pack, not able to see and dizzy(?) and feeling me drive 90 mph through a mountain pass while trying to stop my mind from imagining all the CSI bleeder in the brain scenarios.

I also think it unlikely that a tumor would suddenly manifest itself like that, just -boom! goodbye function, hello walleyes!- and since I waited to post all this here until we had more of a picture, she is now pretty much 100%.

Last night, she chased Tahoe, tried to bite him on the bottom, and stole the rawhide he was working on, so we’re pretty happy with that. The left-side weakness persisted, but we kept quiet all week and every 12 hour period was markedly better than the last, and yesterday she was catching treats in midair again.

We asked if it could have been a stroke–because of all the one-sided weakness, she even had a droopy mouth on that side, (she was allowed to finish my vegetable soup and was orange on one side of her face) and he said that it isn’t usual for dogs, although it can happen when there is hypertension.

They had taken her blood pressure three times and each time it was high, but each time it was lower, and decreasing during each time so he thinks it was just high because of stress, and not a factor and a stroke was unlikely.

So the theory we are thinking of is that when she fell, she hit her back or neck enough to scramble her brains a bit and cause the weakness (the back left seems particularly weak, and the sound I heard was not the sound of a noggin hitting tile). We saw such relatively rapid improvement, we’re just trying to keep her quiet and with no chance of re-injuring whatever the heck it was in the first place.

I’m pretty sure we’re completely out of the woods, so woo-hoo!

Ugh, marathon post, and I’m sure that reading about dog medical issues is about as exciting as human issues, but hey, that’s my exciting life and thus my blog. Hooray. We are really grateful for her miraculous recovery. I don’t know how parents of human kids can do it.

But we’d like all the dog shenanigans to stop. Just stop. So tired of vet visits. Whatever it takes to keep them healthy and happy, but we’d like a little break, please.

Sorry, no knitting or spinning piccies, because they’re all in progress and a little dull at the moment.

I did host the local knitting group here at our house and had a great time, but didn’t take any pictures.

Although I should have, since the dogs were flopping all over people. Not really being intrusive that I could see, but getting onto the furniture with people and milking the ear rubs for all they were worth.

Permalink