If some of you have been wondering why I have been coming into work late over the last few weeks it is because my nearly 18 yo female dog Chloe has been very sick. Every morning I have to feed her and give her natural medication while my wife sleeps as she keeps her up most of the night because she can't stand up anymore by herself anymore and gets distressed and needs to be turned over every so often. She has had kidney problems for the last 3 years but due to my wifes loving care and attention, she is still going.... however we know that she probably hasn't got long to go now. Back in March we thought we had lost her as she became very sick so we took her to the vet and they put her on IV fluids. After a couple of days this improved her condition and when we went to pick her up the vet was basically hinting that we should put her down. This upset us both because it seems that as soon as an animal has a problem the only solution a vet seems to be taught is to "put it to sleep". We asked if there as anything else we could do and they said that we could administer saline solution at home but she would probably only last a week. We decided that we would give it a go so we bought some saline fluid bags and went home..... that was 9 months ago. Almost every night for the last 9 months we have been injecting 200ml of saline solution under her skin to help clean out the toxin bulid up due to her kidneys not functioning properly. She has been eating and drinking well over this time but unfortunately mentally she has been losing control of bodily functions and now she can't stand up by herself so we have to hold her up when taking her to the toilet and feeding her. We have decided that while she has an apetite and will drimk water we will continue to look after her as I am sure she will let us know when she is ready to go. As we have no children and she has been with us for so long it will be a very sad day for both of us.
Life is cruel sometimes.
