Friday, January 25, 2013

Buddy's Story

First some back story.

Randall and I originally began fostering in July 2009 when we took in Elvis, the puppy mill refugee from Waco, who was a permanent medical foster. Elvis was basically sent home with us to die, and no one expected him to live more than a few weeks...certainly not two years. And when we lost Elvis in Summer 2012, we kept on fostering with our focus being on dachshunds (my breed) and seniors.

Fast forward to December 2012. We lost Haley, my 17 year old standard smooth dachshund who was the last of my breeding from the days when I showed dachshunds. Randall and I had talked about fostering another special needs senior, but we knew our time with Haley was limited and we needed to focus on her. Also, five dogs is really the limit for Randall since he has ADD, and more than five really stretches his ability to keep track of them.

We had dog sat for Dawn Enriquez last summer, and we had talked about fostering through her group since Bark N Rest pulls the most senior and special needs of small breeds. She's in Azle, so we knew that it would take some coordination to make happen, but things looked to be working out, and we expected to have a foster dog from her probably in early February.

OK. So we're just a bit early, but whose counting? :)


Dawn contacted me a couple of weeks ago to see if we were ready to foster. There was a candidate at the Irving shelter that she had her eye on. His stray hold wasn't up for quite some time, but if Randall and I were ready to take on a new foster, she would tag this boy. At the time, she was told by the shelter that he was 15+, but relatively healthy (as you'll see in a bit, that's patently untrue). So tagged he was with his stray hold up on 1/17.



 Buddy enters stage left.


At the shelter in Irving

At the shelter in Irving

 And a very unhealthy little senior he is, too. This is the type of dog Dawn pulls, but still it bothers me that the Irving shelter was so far off the mark with him (Caveat: I have a personal history with Irving. I did their adoption portal work from August 2011 until May 2012 when the volunteer situation blew up and many of us left. So I have a history and it's pretty bitter.)

Sweet Buddy's medical situation isn't good. It's remarkably similar to Elvis's medical problems, though, which was one reason Dawn wanted to get him here as soon as possible.

Start with the good news...he's neutered and heartworm negative.

Then the bad news. He is late stage heart murmur (grade 5-6/6) moving into congestive heart failure. He is also late stage collapsed trachea.

So Buddy wheezes like a bellows, and he's got the rasping cough that goes with his condition. But he's here and he's got a host of medicines we're working with. Currently, he has Lasix, Enalapril, Robitussin DM and Vetmedin. When we picked him up from Dawn yesterday, she'd stopped all his medicines because he wasn't reacting well to them. She wasn't sure what was causing the problem, and he'd only been on them a day, so she decided to skip his morning medicine.

Having watched Elvis react badly to Vetmedin and hearing some of what Buddy was doing, I decided we'd start with Lasix and Robitussin we got him home and then get him on Enalapril today. So that's where we are. The Lasix is in tablet form, so I don't have the luxury of giving him a bit more if he needs it, but Dawn is going to send me some Guafenasin  and Torbutrol to help with his cough if it gets out of control at night. Some of that is related to the trachea collapse, but some is also his heart.

His rear assembly has some problems and you can see it in the stiff legged gait. It looks as if an old injury didn't heal right, but it doesn't really seem to bother him. We'll just be sure he doesn't over do it...now that we know he doesn't always limit his activities (see photo below).

Buddy showing us he still has some moves

He's also quite thin, and we're going to work on that too. He's got a good appetite and he picked up on the fact I'm The Foodlady just about immediately. So while he does like Randall a great deal, my stock rises astronomically when I head into the kitchen.

Personality wise, you just couldn't ask for a sweeter boy. He came in and everyone took to him immediately. Even Skeeter, the resident Chihuahua, hasn't had too much trouble adjusting to him. He's fine with the cats....he's eyed Howdy with some interest and I told him that was a really bad cat to test the waters with. So he's left both Howdy and Ollie alone.

He won't really tolerate a crate. So, like Padre before him, he eats in one, but that's it. He likes the dog pillow here in our room, so since that's where he's comfortable, this is where he can sleep. When he gets agitated or stressed, the wheezing and coughing kick in, and I really see no reason to put him through that. He's more or less house broken....I waffle on that because the boy IS on Lasix, and since that's a diuretic, he's going to need to pee a lot. We have hard surface floors throughout the house, so it's no big deal if he can't make it outside all the time.

Watch the birdie...errrr....treat


So here we are with Buddy, a needy senior who will live out his days here for however long he chooses. When it's time, he'll let us know and we'll let him go, reluctantly, I'm sure, but he'll leave us knowing he's been loved and cared for. And we'll let him go knowing we've been blessed with the love and joy that we can only get from loving an old dog.


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