Before I tell you this story, I will say that everything ends happily.
Sookie is our elderly Ye Olde English Bulldogge, otherwise knows as the orc dog. She is beauty, she is grace, how can you not love that face?
She is going on 13 years old. Her hips and her knees have arthritis. She moves around solely because of the steady regimen of fivovet, gabapentin, and osti, a joint supplement, which Gordon administers to her every morning via a hot dog. We started her on smoked sausage at first, because Sookie, despite eating rocks and random crap, is a master of spitting the pills out. Hiding them first in her favorite sausage and then in hot dogs is the only way we can get her to take it without shoving a hand down her throat. The morning pill ritual became known as sausage time. Occasionally Sookie will drag herself into the kitchen and sit because it’s sausage time and she would like her treat, please.
Several days ago, I woke up at 4:30 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. After rolling around for a while, I checked my phone and it was a good thing I did, because Kid 2’s house had sprung a leak and she was in a panic. That’s a fun story for another time, but to summarize, it turned out that a 2×4 fell because of a faulty nail and dented her AC pan. It ended happily, but threw me into a sleep deficit for a few days.
A couple of days later, I wake up in the middle of the night again. I check the clock. 4:30 am. What is it about the 4:30? I hear a choking sound, which, as any dog owner will tell you, is code for get up and let your dog outside. I open the primary bedroom’s door, let Sookie out, and flick on the lights, resigning myself to cleaning up some dog vomit.
Blood. It’s like a crime scene from a gory police procedural. There is blood on the floor, blood on her pillow, blood, blood, everywhere is blood.
OMG, our old dog is dying.
The other two dogs are like, “Hey, there is blood. How cool.”
I check on Sookie. She is standing in the yard in the dark. I grab peroxide, drown the worst of the blood on the floor – yay, tile, mop it up with paper towels, so no cats or dogs decide to taste it. Then I wake up Gordon, tell him there is blood, and then we both go to get Sookie in.
Sookie walks very slowly because of her arthritis, so it takes awhile. Finally we bring her in and she takes two steps inside the house and collapses. Her paws are bloody, her chin is bloody, everywhere is bloody. I’m sitting on the floor, with peroxide and paper, my hands in latex gloves, and frantically trying to clean her up to see if it’s a wound of some kind.
There is no wound. The blood is coming from her mouth. It must be internal bleeding.
By now it’s past 5:00 am. The only emergency vet in range is on the other side of New Braunfels. It will take almost an hour to get there, and when we do get there, we will have a long wait. She is 80 lbs of dead weight and Gordon, who normally would pick her up and carry her, can’t do it because of his shoulder.
I’m crying because the dog is dying. Cleaning and crying and cleaning and…
Sookie sighs, gets up, and goes to the kitchen to drink water.
We watch her drink and then she sits by the island.
Sookie: Sausage time?
Us: WTF.
Gordon gets a chunk of chicken and tosses it to her. She snaps it out of the air and eats it.
Clearly the news of her demise was greatly exaggerated.
We decide to wait for our regular vet to open. There is no point in going to the New Braunfels vet, because not only will it take forever to get down there with traffic, but she took food and water which means she will be triaged to the middle of the line, so dogs hit by cars and bitten by rattlesnakes can get life-saving care.
Our vet opens at 7:00 am, I call them, they get us in first thing in the morning.
Sookie has infected teeth. There must’ve been an abscess. It ruptured. How did a cup and a half of blood come out of it, I have no idea, but that was the answer.
Sookie was scheduled for the dental surgery. This was very stressful all around. We weren’t sure if she would come through the surgery okay because of her age, but her quality of life was a factor and unchecked tooth decay can lead to gum disease and jaw infections. Cue a week of tense waiting.
She had the surgery yesterday. 13 extractions and almost $3,000 later, here she is back to living her best life on her pillow.
She is very mad at us. She occasionally groans, and right now she is not in the study with us because she chose to lay in the living room by her lonesome. However, she took soft food and water today so we are on the road to recovery.
In other good news, the final edit of This Kingdom was accepted and we are off to the copyedit. Much rejoicing all around.
Here is hoping for a few days of not waking up at 4:30 am because of some crisis.
I am glad to read she is recovering. It is stressful and expensive to provide care for elderly pets, you always need to weigh the benefits versus the risks of care, like the dental care your orc dog just had. It seems she lucked out and her bloody crisis at 4:30 am had a simple and fixable solution. Deep sign of relief…
Way late to this post, but big hugs on old dog love! My boy is 13 and a half and he FINALLY ate a regular serving of undoctored kibble last night a month after his recent extractions. I keep reminding myself every day is an adventure which I’m grateful to have as I’m dodging wet spots on area rugs and inspiring him to eat with cheese. Our fur kids are the best of us.