Shadow was a very special dog from the
start. We already Hogan and Shorty in
our family, and of course I had to fall in love with this little black lab
puppy sitting alone in a crate staring at me with his little brown eyes. I asked a shelter worker if I could hold
him, and he just crawled on my shoulders with his front little paws. It was May 27, 2006 and he was just eight
weeks old. He was the last puppy left out of the litter
and the pups and mom were left behind when the owner went to jail. We named him Shadow, and so here is his life
with us. It didn’t take long for him to
adjust to living with us. He loved to
play with Shorty (I think pestering him was more like it). One of his favorite activities was eating,
and so he gained some extra weight, so we had to cut down his food intake and
exercise him more. We went to the dog
park almost every weekend so they could play with “friends”. In January 2007, Shadow was running across the
park and started limping. I thought it
was a just a strain, but he didn’t get any better. A vet visit confirmed that Shadow had Cranial (Anterior) Cruciate Ligament, which is a tear in the ligament in
the knee. Since the tear wasn’t that bad,
Shadow just needed to rest and stay off his leg as much as possible. We followed doctor’s orders by keeping him
immobile in a crate. I felt so bad because all he wanted to do was play. As months went by, his leg seemed to improve,
but because he couldn’t exercise like he used to, he gained weight. Regular visits to the vet indicated his knee
was better but now he needed to lose weight….they suggested swimming so there
wouldn’t be such a strain on his knee. We
taught him how to swim in our pool and exercise him in the water to strengthen
his knee and lose weight at the same time.
Being part lab you would think he liked water, but he didn’t. He wore a life preserver just so he could
doggy paddle!! He swam as much as he could and Shadow was as
happy as he could be, but I knew something was wrong. When he walked, his back legs were bowed, and
he would have to stop often to rest. He
didn’t have the energy he used to have.
An emergency vet exam showed his knee was worse and he would need
surgery immediately. It was quickly scheduled
for the following Monday, June 24, 2008. The next day, the unexpected happened; Shadow
stepped out of the pool and his back leg didn’t work at all. He was dragging it and screamed in pain. I rushed him to the vet; he didn’t have any
blood pressure in his back leg. They
gave him pain killers and said to keep him comfortable until the surgery on that
Monday. He became worse over the weekend
and by the time I took him in for surgery, he couldn’t use either of his back
legs. An ultrasound revealed that he had
a blood clot in his heart….there was nothing they could do for him. At that moment, I had to make the dreaded
decision to have him euthanized. I
brought Shadow home for his last visit
with Hogan and Shorty. My husband came home to say his goodbyes. How could this be happening? He was just over two years old, he didn’t
deserve this. He quietly passed over
the Rainbow Bridge that day…many tears were shed by his vet, her staff, and our
family. It’s been a long time since Shadow has passed;
he was a good dog and I still miss him terribly.
Oh my! That's horribly sad! I am terrified of the day I will have to go through what you did! I'm so sorry for your loss. I can't believe he was only two! My 11 year old dog did the same thing to his knee and just went in for surgery! $3000.00 to get it fixed! He is still recovering and limping but I'm hoping this will help him live a longer life not having to deal with the pain of his leg! The vets should have done more research for your dog and it probably would have saved his life! A guy recently told me that his dog was poisoned and he lived next to a vet and so he had him take a look at him and just told him to let the dog sleep and drink lots of water, but the owner knew something was wrong with his dog. But he listened to his neighbor and his dog passed away over night!
ReplyDeleteI hope that your dog fully recovers and leads a good life. Shadow was well taken care of by his vets, the problem was he was overweight because he couldn't exercise like a normal dog. He was also on Rimadyl, which is a pain killer. After he died, I read that Labs that had taken Rimadyl were more likely to die than any other breed. So I'm not sure if it was a specific thing or a number of underlying issues that caused his blood clot. I can't believe that a vet would tell his neighbor to let the dog sleep it off and drink lots of water. That's terrible that his dog passed away when something may have been done to prevent it.
ReplyDelete