Lou the Beagle

The news is not good.

After two nights at a reputable vet (the vet I used for seven years for my rescue cat, Jordan), Lou was still not eating on her own and was losing more weight. A three-month old beagle should not be three pounds. It's just wrong. By the time we took Lou back from the vet, she wasn't capable of doing much at all other than curling up into a ball and occasionally opening up her sad green eyes and peering out at us from under heavy, sleepy lids.

After extensive testing, it was determined that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Lou that anyone can discern. She has no structural defects, no worms or other parasites, no distempter, no parvovirus, no infections of any kind, neither viral nor bacterial. And yet she won't eat. For lack of a definitive diagnosis, Lou has been labeled a "non-doer", a/k/a a "non-thriver", a/k/a a "fading puppy". Quite simply, Lou appears to have no will to live.

During her two nights and three days at the vet, she was fed intravenously, given IV fluids and IV antibiotics, kept in a warm room, wrapped in a warm blanket with a heating pad and force fed via a syringe down her throat every six hours. At first, it looked like she was responding well, which is to say that she was keeping down the food that was being force fed into her. But by the end of the third day, even that was no longer the case: everything that went down came back up.

Like I said, the news is not good. I am beside myself. Yesterday, all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and lay in bed. Unfortunately, I had to go to temple and then to my in-laws for dinner (worst meal I've had in years, and that doesn't even have anything to do with my state of mind...my mother-in-law simply cannot cook, and I don't know why she tries).

Lou is now back at Pets on Lex, where she is being fed and cared for every hour (supposedly). I assume that the hope and expectation is that she can be brought back to a normal weight and then sold to some unsuspecting consumer. This horrifies me, and I wish that they would be decent enough to hand her over to a Beagle rescuer who will find her a home where she can be hand-fed for the duration of her life (there are amazing, saintly people out there who are willing and happy to do this; I know...I met one of these incredible people at the vet's office yesterday, someone who told me that she hand-fed a three pound "non-doer" yorkie for 10 years).

I believe that my children understand what has happened. We explained that Lou is sick and the vet couldn't make her better, and we can't keep her because we can't take care of a dog that requires round the clock care but that there are wonderful people out there who can and will. I showed my kids puppies on the street that were prancing and pouncing and springing, and told them that this is the way healthy puppies act. I wanted to give them a "visual", as opposed to just the less concrete concept of Lou's not being willing to eat on her own. They understood. Brian cried, and I was relieved that he expressed his feelings. Adam didn't cry, but he said he felt sad.

I think it is going to be very important that we find a new and healthy dog, not immediately, but not in the too distant future either. At the moment, I am grieving and a bit confused as to how this could have happened. I go through moments of looking for ways to blame myself. And I go through moments of anger. When I am feeling a bit more whole, it will be time to find a new puppy.

Until then, life will have to go on, and it will.

YC