Paralibrarian
Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 6,168
Location: CNY
Dogs Name: Elka (RIP), Ulrike
Dogs Age: 5/16/09-7/16/18, DOB 5/5/18
Gallery Pics: 1
Visit GingerGunlock's Gallery Thanks: 22,941
Thanked 11,787 Times in 4,827 Posts
Elka
I haven't posted here in a long long time, I know, and I put this on the DT Facebook group but realized I wanted to come here too just in case.
We lost Elka yesterday. She was coughing on Friday, and the vet thought it was a bronchial infection. She was worse over the weekend; the antibiotic made her throw up, she stopped eating, and her heart rate was visibly elevated and irregular. She had an EKG yesterday morning, and they diagnosed DCM/congestive heart failure. We got meds but she threw one up immediately....we should've realized. If she wasn't eating, we weren't going to be able to medicate her. And she acted like she WANTED to eat, I made plain chicken breasts for her that she would nose and then immediately turn her head from. In the afternoon, she went downhill faster, just lying on the couch breathing hard, not even flicking an ear if we said her name.
So we took her back to the vet's. They were very good, very nice, and she wasn't upset or agitated or anything, just lay on the floor with me, with her head in my lap and her paw in my hand, and we let her go.
We made the right decision, keeping her longer would've only been more suffering for her. She could barely get off the couch that last time, and got herself in the car, also only barely. We don't regret it but now we don't have our girl anymore.