July 2012
7 posts
I’m trying not to drag out Sasha-related updates forever and a day since it’s got to be a bummer to read, but there do seem to be a few more things I want to say about her. These are kind of disjointed and roughly in order of how likely they are to make me cry. I figure if I start with the less likely, I might actually make it through to the end.
First, the costs. I did a round up...
Talking about Sasha here has been so much a part of having her that I’ve thought a fair bit about how I would make this post, but in the end I don’t think any of the things I could write would be right.
Goodbye, Miss Sasha. Mommy loved you.
I’ve been struggling with the decision on what to do about Sasha, as anyone who has had the depressing misfortune to have talked to me in person recently knows. She’s slowly sliding downhill — eating less, moving less, tired more. She doesn’t appear to be in serious pain, but she is unhappy. There are good moments and bad ones, but the general trend is down.
In the good...
One of my neighbors just sat with me in the grass outside our building, told me of her miraculous recovery from a tumor and prayed for Sasha. It isn’t my belief system, but it is still immensely touching to have someone be so kind and caring.
I have no idea how Sasha decides from one moment to the next whether or what she is going to eat. After a full day in which she rather worrisomely refused to eat anything I offered her - from steak to liver treats to plain rice - she suddenly decided to eat a massive amount of Cesar dog treats, and even accepted a few of them dipped in liver sausage that glued her evening meds to them.
On the...
June 2012
28 posts
I just got the results from this morning’s blood tests and made the decision not to give Sasha another blood transfusion. Barring a miraculous remission caused by the azathioprine, Dr. Martin believe she will probably not survive another week without one.
But at this point, giving her one seems like it will be prolonging her death, rather than prolonging her life. Her prognosis, even with...
She wouldn’t eat anything this morning — not even liver treats. But I bought her a striploin when we got home from the vet, and fried it up for her, and she’s eating that.
Maybe this whole not eating thing is just a ruse to get a better quality of things to eat?
(I wish. I really, really wish.)
Made Sasha garlic butter shrimp for dinner, since she ate the majority of the garlic butter shrimp I made me for lunch. Not sure that all three of garlic, butter and shrimp are actually essential to her enjoyment of this particular dish, but I don’t like to mess with success.
Things Sasha will not eat under any circumstances:
- Dog food
- Denta-bones
- Canned pumpkin
Things Sasha did eat at one point, but will no longer eat:
- Hot dogs
- Processed cheese
- Rice
- Carrots
- Nachos
- Raw celery
- Dog poop
Things Sasha might eat if they are mixed with things she’d prefer to eat:
- Liverwurst
- Pill pockets
Things Sasha will sometimes eat:
-...
I like to maintain the self-deception that I am not one of those ‘My dog is my child!’ people who doesn’t recognize the difference between a baby and a puppy. The fact that I am currently feeding her Heinz strained chicken off a spoon is making that increasingly difficult.
On a related note, Sasha has taken to deliberately curling up next to me on the couch, something she’s never done before. I don’t know if she’s trying to comfort me or her.
Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s me.
Talked to Dr. Martin again just now. The rest of her bloodwork was somewhat vaguely optimistic, by which I mean “pretty bad, but not complete and utter shite” - she is still producing reticulocytes and she’s actually overproducing platelets.
Sasha did eat a little bit of ground beef (funny story about that in a minute) this evening, so that was positive.
We’re going...
More bad news from the vet visit, unfortunately.
Her red blood cells are down to 10%, which is the lowest reading ever. Clearly, the cyclosporin is not working. And it’s got nasty side effects. So, we’re definitely taking her off that, which means she can come off the tylosin, too probably, since she’s only taking it to counteract the side effects.
But what’s next is...
Woke up this morning to find that Sasha had peed and vomited and vomited some more (or possibly the latter was poop, but if so, it wasn’t much poop) in her pen over night and was cowering in her crate. Took her out for a walk, and then brought her back in and she won’t eat anything, not even a liver treat, which is usually the one thing she will eat no matter what. Which is concerning...
I avoided buy Sasha squeaky toys because I assumed they would Fran her out. Because everything freaks her out. But we were just in the lobby, having a sit, and somebody’s baby started honking on one of these ubiquitous giraffes. Sasha immediately got up and ran (well, ran relative to her usual pace - so, trotted briskly) across the lobby to investigate.
Apparently a squeaky toy should be...
I’m worried about Sasha this morning. She’s really not eating — she ate two Caesar treats, and enough Brie to get the important pills into her, but she won’t eat chicken skin or actual chicken or liver treats.
Dr. Martin, her doc at the VEC is away this week, so hopefully her appetite will improve. Taking her to her regular vet seems like it’s probably fairly...
Sasha seems really thrown off by her haircut — she can’t decide if she does or doesn’t want to sit on the floor in the lobby, she can’t get traction when she tries to scratch and she peed on the carpet while I was home in what I’m pretty sure was a sign of her being pissed off. I hope she gets used to it quickly, because it’s so sad to watch her be all...
Sometimes, I sing little songs to Sasha as we walk. Tonight’s song: Oh my darlin, oy my darlin, Oh my darlin, Sasha dog Slightly slower than a turtle Slightly faster than a log It was not the speediest walk.
WatchSasha haz an itchy.
I just talked to Dr. Martin. The fact that she didn’t poop for days after starting the Tylosin was actually normal, and I didn’t need to be worried. Probably she would have told me that if we’d actually spoken last week, but it was kind of done through intermediaries.
Her CBC numbers from last week were not good — about 14%, which is about where she was before she had the...
Poop!
(Sasha had diarrhea really badly last week, so I got some anti-diarrhea meds for her, but then she hasn’t pooped at all since she started taking them, so I stopped giving them to her on yesterday. And she still didn’t poop all day yesterday. But now, finally, today, there was poop. Giant poop.)
Came home to find the zip tie intact, but the cage door open, and Sasha in the living room. What the fucking fuck? I can’t even figure out how that could possibly have happened.
I have put Sasha in her kennel and zip-tied the locking mechanism closed. I have also provided a treat ball filled with liver treats to distract her attention. I am now going to buy groceries.
What do you suppose the odds are that she’s still in there when I get back?
It’s official, my dog is the reincarnation of Harry Houdini.
Because of my earlier dilemma, I decided to backslide into locking her in her actual crate. I checked at both doors to the crate were locked before I left her.
I came home to find her waiting at the door, having peed on the floor. How the fuck?!
Doggie math: #1 + #2 = yuck
I need to go to the vet to pick up some new meds for Sasha. Different from the ones I had to go back and pick up last night because I forgot them there yesterday morning.
Last night, I opted to take Sasha with me, so that she wouldn’t pee on the floor while I was gone. Instead, she had a diarrhea attack all over the car while I was at the vet.
I’m not sure that was an...
We went to PetSmart and bought the big bag of treats this time, since it seems likely that she’ll actually live long enough to eat them all. (I don’t think I posted about it at the time, but answering the mental question “Will she live long enough to eat the larger, more economical bag of treats?” with “Better get the small bag.” was one of the low points of...
Sasha is declining to eat her breakfast this morning. I’m not sure if that’s a sign that she’s ill (-er than usual) or just a sign that it took me two pieces of cheese and a hot dog to get her medication down her throat this morning and she’s not hungry.
Knowing that I hadn’t finished refortifying the not-so-inescapable fortress, before I left for the movies, I walked, Sasha, gave her a guilt bone to keep her occupied and laid down a couple of pee pads in her favorite places to pee on the rug. Came home to find she had escaped, and peed not once, not twice, but three times. Between the two pee pads.
Sasha has discovered the awesome absorbing power of pee pads.
Not for peeing on, you understand. But for drying off on after going outside in the rain. Peeing she still reserves for the living room carpet.
May 2012
56 posts
On the one hand, it brings me great joy that Sasha likes me enough to want to always be in the same room as me.
On the other hand, that makes me feel guilty every time I want to get up and grab a drink or something, because it means she wakes up, follows me into the kitchen, and lays back down, just in time for me to turn around and come back into the office.
I gave her a bath, she peed on my carpet. I’m pretty sure she felt that was justifiable.
For those of you keeping score at home:
Impenetrable fortress - 0; 12lb dog - 1.
I had anticipated the possibility that she could get out between the fabric and the cage, and made a plan for it. But decided to hold off on executing it, because it would be a lot of work. And I was hopeful it wouldn’t be necessary. Not sure what I was thinking there.
On the plus side, she peed on the pee pads before she escaped AND once she...
I believe Sasha just expressed her feelings about the new inescapable pen quite clearly, in urinary form.
But since the new inescapable pen has a plastic covering over the floor, it didn’t get on the carpet, thus reinforcing the whole raison d’etre for the new inescapable pen.
Much like the designers of the Titanic, I have probably just jinxed myself, and now she will find a way...
While I was in the bedroom, working on my new anti-escaping strategy, Sasha was in the office, escaping.
While out walking tonight, Sasha found a stick she liked the looks of, and she picked it up and continued trotting along, carrying it with her. I didn’t so much like the look of it but she looked *so* proud and happy that I didn’t have the heart to make her put it down.
About 100 meters later, we met up with another dog, and she immediately dropped the stick and ran to hide.
The...
I can’t win for losing with Sasha, these days.
She loves to sleep on the tiles downstairs in the lobby, I assume because they are cool. So I busted out the extra tiles the builder left for me and used them to line part of her pen, thinking she would like to sleep on them.
Instead, she’s terrified of them and won’t even step on them to get liver treats.
Sasha *really* likes Kraft Dinner. I knew there was a reason I picked her.
Sasha just had a very interested encounter with the cat that lives by the front door. She was super curious, got right up close trying to sniff her. The cat was surprisingly calm about that — only slightly hissy.
Sasha had a recheck appointment with Dr. Martin this morning after a week on prednisone, and unfortunately, the results don’t seem that promising. Something I’d assumed was a positive — that she has a very good appetite and wants to eat ALL the things — is apparently likely just a side effect of the steroids. It’s also likely the steroids that are causing the panting...
Dear Sasha,
I fully understand that you may not want to eat the carrots, but if you’re not going to eat them, is it strictly necessary that you sleep on them?
Love,
Mommy
Can someone please explain why and how my dog, who is, as you may recall, probably terminally ill, often barely able to even walk around the block, perfectly capable of holding her pee for 8-9 hours at night and only 8 inches tall, will, when left alone for an hour while I go to the grocery store, inevitably find her way out of her two foot high pen and pee on my carpet?
Sasha has figured out what ‘go for a walk’ means. I called out to her from the living room while she was in the office, in her pen but not locked in it, and she immediately came trotting out. And I’d been trying to lure her out by rattling the treat bag for the better part of an hour, so it was definitely the promise of a walk that brought her out.
