{"id":1329,"date":"2011-10-01T16:22:14","date_gmt":"2011-10-01T21:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1329"},"modified":"2013-03-06T16:22:47","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T21:22:47","slug":"whose-dog-life-is-it-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1329","title":{"rendered":"Whose Dog Life Is It Anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Following my mother’s stroke, she sometimes knew she was in a hospital in Albany.\u00a0 Other times she thought she was in a library in Queens.\u00a0 However, when asked by the Bollywood-handsome resident whether or not she wanted the feeding tube, she replied quite coherently, “Not if it’s not going to make me better.”<\/p>\n

She had a DNR, and her wishes were clear. Medication that might prevent more clotting in her brain would probably cause her heart to go, and the meds for her heart would have brought more clots to her brain (as would doing nothing).\u00a0 But even putting in the tube and waiting for nature to take its course, would have been prolonging her agony.\u00a0 As my sister said, “If she can’t eat ice-cream, what’s the point?”<\/p>\n

With dogs it’s different.<\/p>\n

Meet Maizie, a Jack Russell-mix-rescue.\u00a0 My better half took her in in 1999 when she was probably somewhere between two and four years old.\u00a0 Do the math.\u00a0 He was going to give her to a friend as a companion for her other dog, but when the two dogs met, Maizie attacked, and the friend got a nasty-Maizie bite while trying to break it up.\u00a0 After that, my future husband knew he had something “special” on his hands.\u00a0 When we began dating, and I brought up his possibly moving in, I had the feeling he was waiting for Maizie to die first, but oddly enough, she liked me, and there wasn’t a problem until that unfortunate incident in the elevator about which we never speak.<\/p>\n

Maizie never had a 100% accident-in-the house-free record, but I was able to “un-paper train” her.\u00a0 She got the idea that the apartment was not for peeing and was pretty good about it.\u00a0 Then in July,\u00a0 that changed. Suddenly, there were puddles of clear looking pee all over the apartment. She was waking up unconcerned in her own urine, and drinking water by the bucketful.<\/p>\n

So off to the vet, who had long suspected Cushings, quite common in older dogs and treatable. We were warned about the expense involved. Medication requires expensive monitoring and over-medication could cause the dog to slip into Addison’s disease and die.\u00a0 If the cortisol levels don’t go down enough, however, the symptoms will persist.\u00a0 So there’s a protocol that you have to commit to.<\/p>\n

Some people choose not to treat older dogs, not only because of the monitoring, but because lowering the cortisol may bring out other conditions like arthritis which high cortisol actually alleviates.<\/p>\n

We discussed our options, including putting her down.\u00a0 How long did she really have?\u00a0 The end was inevitable.\u00a0 Why wait till she was suffering?\u00a0 Why put her through all the vet visits?\u00a0 But were we being selfish?\u00a0 Reacting only to the cost of treatment and not really thinking about her best interest?\u00a0 We couldn’t live with the pee.\u00a0 Or could we?\u00a0 My husband probably could.\u00a0 He was at work all day, while I mostly work from home.\u00a0 Why do I hate her?\u00a0 It’s not like I’m a neat freak.\u00a0 Why draw the line at dog pee?\u00a0 Was he thinking I was being mean, wanting to kill his<\/em> dog?\u00a0 She was his<\/em> dog, before she was ours. Had I ever even liked Maizie?\u00a0 Hadn’t I just married him for the health insurance to begin with?\u00a0 Did we really even know each other? Could this marriage be saved?<\/p>\n

Besides us, what about her? What the hell is the best interest of an animal?\u00a0 Does a dog contemplate her mortality?\u00a0\u00a0 Would she be terrified of being put down because she knows what it is? Or would she be terrified because she’d read our anxiety and guilt, and because she knows that no good ever came from a vet visit?<\/p>\n

We chose to treat.\u00a0\u00a0 We didn’t really want to take that anniversary trip to Italy anyway.\u00a0 About three weeks in, her symptoms had mostly abated, but then she crashed. She could hardly move, wasn’t eating, had no sparkle in her eyes. We were ready to put her down, but the vet convinced us this was nothing more than a bump in the road, a medication management issue.\u00a0 With a little “pred” and\u00a0 a lower dose of the Cushings drug, she could go on for years.<\/p>\n

Why was I suddenly remembering the last year of my 1973 Dodge Dart, and why was the vet suddenly reminding me of my old mechanic?<\/p>\n

The clincher was Maizie herself.\u00a0 She\u00a0 rallied as soon as we got to the vets, a situation that probably caused her diminished cortisol to rise, and she really did seem to be saying, “Please don’t kill me.”<\/p>\n

The second time she crashed, she was on the lower dose.\u00a0 She stopped eating.\u00a0 We couldn’t even give her the prednisone. By the time we brought her in, she needed\u00a0 IV fluids and critical care.\u00a0 Her electrolytes were messed up.\u00a0 After her first night, the vet asked us to visit to see if we could coax her to eat.\u00a0 We both left work, but we couldn’t get the normally voracious Maizie to try more than a few bites.\u00a0 She still had to stay over till the next evening, but finally her appetite returned and her electrolytes were good.<\/p>\n

A few thousand dollars since her diagnosis and she’s home, tapering off the pred.\u00a0 They don’t want to withdraw it too quickly, lest she go into shock.\u00a0\u00a0 She’s back to peeing clear streams and drinking constantly.\u00a0 Today, there was a minor victory when she finally figured out what the wee-wee pads were for. but it was probably just coincidence as she ignored them later.<\/p>\n

Where do we go from here?\u00a0 Possibly she’ll be ok once we taper her, at least for while.\u00a0 The meds may have had the effect of screwing enough with the endocrine system to lower her cortisol for a while. However, given how rapidly her thirst and appetite have returned, we suspect that even without the pred she’ll continue to urinate in the house. I’m not talking about the occasional age-related accident by the way.\u00a0 I’m talking about walking her every two hours and still seeing about eight indoor accidents a day.\u00a0 I’m talking about the feeling of dread I now experience whenever I hear her lap up water. I’m talking about comically slipping on wet floors when we<\/em> get up in the middle of the night.\u00a0 I’m talking about … an unsustainable situation.<\/p>\n

Excuse me, but there she goes again.<\/p>\n

The vet says if the symptoms remain once she’s off the pred, we could try an even smaller dose of the meds.\u00a0 The real experts, other dog owners who I’ve met on the forums, report that with this particular pill there’s no rhyme or reason. Sometimes big dogs do well on very little and tiny ones need a lot, and a more experienced vet might have started her on a really low dose, and worked up, which could have saved us thousands and not brought her to the brink of oblivion.\u00a0 I’m terrified of seeing her crash again, but beyond that, we’re going broke.\u00a0 The test they “need” before they can restart her will run upwards of $400 dollars. Then it’ll be around $100\u00a0 for the new meds at the lower dose.\u00a0 After that, in\u00a0 another two weeks they’ll need\u00a0 to recheck her levels.\u00a0 The meds we have in the house are useless because they are capsules and not easy or safe to split.\u00a0 We can’t even try going rogue and splitting them because without a very expensive scale that measures milligrams we can’t measure the dose, and even if we could we’d need another refill if it worked.<\/p>\n

My husband suggested, “You work in Washington Heights, surely you know someone with a pharmacy scale and a soft-spot for dogs.”\u00a0 He is considering bluntness telling the vet,\u00a0 “We don’t need more tests. Just give us the script or the dog dies.”<\/p>\n

In the end, she dies anyway.<\/p>\n

Hindsight is perfect.\u00a0 Surely, if we knew all this, we would have put her down weeks ago, maybe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Update:\u00a0 Just adding a quick link to this video about our relationship with our animal companions via\u00a0 the late, great George Carlin.\u00a0 “Same shit, different species.”
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