Stella

The end of April, around the 28-29th my furry best friend came in from the back yard limping. I assumed she had just twisted her leg funny or something and just decided to keep an eye on her over the next couple of days.  Over the next two days, she stopped limping but still was really slow and favoring her back legs. And then she came in from the backyard with one of her eyes squinty and yucky.

Dogs don't show that something is wrong until the very last minute as a defense mechanism. Friday afternoon I decided that I needed to get her checked out in case it was something bad and she needed to be seen before the weekend. We took a little trip out to our vet. I am not someone who just up and takes my family (or pets) to the doctor unless they really need to go, so the fact that I decided she needed to go in was a big deal. She still didn't have anything super severe wrong with her (that we could see), it was just more of a precaution. He didn't see anything really abnormal on her physical exam except for some swollen lymph nodes. He prescribed her some antibiotics, gave her a shot and  told me if she wasn't acting any better by Monday she needed to go back in for blood work.

Friday night she went completely downhill. I went to get her to take her to the bathroom and she was laying limp on the floor under the dog mat (which is bizarre, she's normally curled up all snug on a pillow). I tried to coax her up to go to the bathroom, and she wanted nothing to do with it. I tried to pick her up and help her, and she yelped at me. More than once. I knew right then that something was seriously wrong with her and was convinced at that point that she would not make it through the night. She had declined so fast. I laid with her on the floor for a few hours and just pet her and talked to her letting her know she was a good dog.

When I woke up the next morning, I was extremely surprised that she was alive and somewhat upright. She was able to at least go outside to the bathroom and then she would just collapse and sleep until the next bathroom break. Very unlike how she usually behaves.

Her eyes were also getting worse and the other eye started to get gooey and squinty as well.

I think this was Monday afternoon, Jade put her own precious blanket on Stella and offered her a sippy of water. She seemed to know that something was wrong.

Monday afternoon we took her back to the vet to get some blood drawn. She had a couple of new symptoms and I explained them to the vet to try and give him as much information as possible. Within minutes he started to suspect that her uterus was infected. He drew her blood and told me that if that's what the results came back with, a routine spay would solve the problem and that they would call me the next day. She hadn't eaten in several days at this point and was very lethargic.

Tuesday morning I woke up first thing to my phone ringing. Stella had some how gotten on my bed and tucked herself into Mart's spot, but was still acting like she felt terrible.
The other vet that worked there told me her white blood cell count was crazy high indicating a very severe infection, and that she needed surgery asap if she was going to live. Within an hour I had dropped Ethan off at school and had her out in Richmond at the vet.

She did in fact have what they call Pyometra. She had a severely infected uterus full of pus, and on the verge of bursting. Had it burst, she wouldn't have lived. She did great in surgery and was able to come home a few hours later.

Poor pup had to have an iv because she was so dehydrated.

This was her incision day 1.

She was so skinny after they removed a very large organ from her belly. It was very obvious at that point that she hadn't eaten in a very long time. For the next couple of days she just needed to recover. She was just tucked in either on the couch, her pillow or in my bed. (Spoiled dog).

Lincoln even snuggled up on the couch with her the afternoon she came home.

I kept trying to get her to eat, she hadn't eaten since Friday. I made her scrambled eggs with cans of chicken. She wanted nothing to do with it.

Finally, a few days after her surgery I was able to convince her to eat a couple of small pieces of chicken. It had been almost a week since she had eaten anything at all.

As her incision healed, it started to itch and was bugging her. I kept getting after her about licking her wound, and eventually she must have gotten annoyed, because she went under the bed and hid out of reach and went to town.

I tried to keep it covered, but it wasn't practical. Funny though!

It was Saturday night and getting late so I ran to Petsmart to get her a cone of shame to wear through the weekend.

She obviously is smarter than she looks, because she figured out how to get it off and it became pointless. I just continued to get after her.

About a week to a week and a half after her surgery, she started to act like her normal self again. She was able to climb the stairs again (instead of me carrying her up and down all the time), she started to slowly eat again and she was even running a little through the backyard.

This was taken today. 10 days after surgery. She is healing up great and is back to her old self (although still very skinny and boney).

I know she's just a dog, and she's a feisty little thing, but she's my dog. She's my friend and my comfort and I am really really grateful that she is alive.