Thank you, Inked Marie. I’m so sorry that you lost four dogs in five years. It hurts so much to lose them. I lost my sweet Sydney, two years to the exact date, before I lost my precious little Kia. They were our children. Kia’s picture is my Avatar. She died, so unnecessarily, and that is why, I am struggling with such deep grief. She was perfectly fine-but a year ago on a Wednesday, she refused her breakfast. She loved breakfast the best, and at 5:30 in the morning, she would be demanding it! She refused it-her little nose seemed stuffy. I gave her Nutri-Cal, then, 1/2 t. of CVS Brand Children’s dye-free/alcohol free decongestant. When she refused another freshly prepared meal, I put a call in to my Vet. He was our Vet for since my sweet Sydney was just 6 months old. All the staff knew me so well, and they knew my girls. Before Sydney died, all I had to do was call, and they’d say, “Which baby, Sydney or Kia?” And I’d get a call back within a few minutes to bring her in immediately.
My Vet always said, “When you call, I know something is wrong, because you know you’re girls so well”.
Well, that afternoon, I spoke with a fairly new receptionist, and I told her, “Kia’s Vet needs to see Kia today-she’s very tiny (4#s) and she’s not eating, and she’s breathing through her mouth.”
She kept asking me to repeat my name, spell it, etc.
My Vet didn’t call me back until 7:45 in the evening. I told him, “Her temp. is down to 96.3” and he said, the decongestant would lower her temp. He said, “With Kia being so tiny, it could be anything. I’m looking at her records, and she had so many teeth pulled last summer, it’s probably an infected tooth. If the decongstant doesn’t relieve her stuffines, bring her into the office in the morning, I’m off on Thursdays, but one of the girls will take care of you”.
This is the same Vet, that used to slip in the back door of the Clinic, meet us in a back room, in his softball uniform, give my girls their vaccinations & go back to his game.
I stayed up with her all night. Listened to her breathing. She wasn’t gasping for breath. But I picked her up in the morning, and she seemed cold. I quickly heated a microvable heat pad, my husband placed her on it in my hands, I wrapped her in her favorite pink blanket, and held her, and she looked into my eyes, trusting that I was going to take care of her. I said to her, “Kia, focus on Mommy. I love you. We’re leaving for the Vet in an hour & you’re going to be fine”. And she made one small sigh, and she was gone.
I was hysterical!
I held her until I knew someone would be in the Vets office. And then, I called and told them, that Kia had died. One of the Techs that knew us so well, met us at the side door, and the Senior partners daughter, who is also a Vet, came into the exam room. She wrapped her arms around me and cried with me. She had lost her two Maltese, two weeks apart.
The next day, my Vet called, and said, “It sounds like it was something in her lungs. Even if you had brought her here, or taken her to the ER, and spent $1,000. we might not have figured out what was wrong.” He knew we had never spared any expense on our girls.
The Vet that took care of us that day, called me about 10 days later, and said her Dad was furious-he said, our Vet should have had us bring her in immediately the evening before and put her on oxygen. They both believed, he would have found what was wrong.
Before MS, I spent 35 years raising Orphaned Wildlife, and I did a lot of work for that Clinic.
So, the Senior partner, was my Wildlife Vet.
I’ve since learned from other people, that my former Vet is all about the money now.
