Poor Puppy!

Echo has had a very rough few months. For being 5 years old (35 in dog years) and already lived 1/3 of her expected life span, she has had no health problems. She has only spent time at the vet for shots and comprehensive exams.

About a month ago, I had to take her in to get her vaccines up to date. I told the doctor that she has been hurting her leg a lot when she runs around the yard. So they took x-rays of her knee and found out that her knee is slipping off. In order to avoid surgery, we were advised to put her on a prescription diet of only dry dog food in hopes that she would loose weight (she was only 2 pounds over weight). She has lost the weight and can now run around the yard with no problems.

2 weeks ago, Echo was not acting normal. She was sleeping all day and wouldn't eat or drink. After looking her over, we found sores in her ears and between the pads of all her paws. I took her into the vet and they were baffled as to what was causing this. All they could tell me was that she was VERY sick. They kept her all day and ran a ton of tests. When I went to pick her up they had decided that she had a bacterial infection so they sent us home with antibiotics.

A week after that visit, the doctor called me and said some cultures they took from Echo came back and it appears she has some kind of fungus infection. More medication for her.

During this time we had noticed that she needed to go outside to use the bathroom a lot more frequently. I figured this had something to do with the infections, but on friday night we noticed that she was peeing blood. We took her back to the vet first thing saturday morning. The doctor took an x-ray of her bladder and decided to operate right then. The x-ray showed a huge stone. They saved all the stones for us to look at. The largest one was 4"x4" and 2" thick (her bladder isn't much bigger than this). The vet said this was the biggest stone she had ever seen and she kept it for "educational purposes". We were told that if we would have waited one more day, Echo would have probably died. She had to spend the night in the hospital for observation and is in a lot of pain, but she will be fine. We hope this is the end for another 5 years.

The white mass near her hind legs is the stone.

Comments

Kolbri said…
I hope everything works out! I know I would be so worried about Nova! I'll pray for Echo! :)
Robyn said…
Oh poor Echo! Hope she heals quickly!
Lisa Miller said…
How sad. You were blessed to keep on top of her problems. I'm glad she's doing better.
Melissa said…
hi... i came across your blog and read this post.. i am a HUGE dog lover and hate to hear any story like this. :o( my dog is 20 lbs. and the vet said she should only be 15 lbs at her age.. my husband and I are doing what we can to help her lose the weight but my grandpa treats her like a grandkid and doesn't understand that he can't feed her 5 times a day and at that he can't feed her regular food.
so if you don't mind i'm going to print this story out with the adorable picture of your dog of course and give to him to read. maybe then i'll get thru to him that's he's hurting her more than helping her.
i hope your little dog has many more healthy years ahead...
:o)

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