Many of you know that I train dogs and also board some of the dogs I train. I don’t train them while they are here, but their owners have come to trust only me to take care of them.
Two weeks ago I came home to find a dog sitting inside the gate in my front yard. She looked like a dog I knew. Turns out it was a dog I knew. One of my clients who has 3 dogs had an “incident” with this one, freaked out and brought her to my house and when I wasn’t there left her.
Seems that this dog, an Australian Shepard named Maja bite a neighbor who was walking down the street with her husband. The husband threatened to come back with a baseball bat and beat the dog to death. So my client freaked and brought her to me where she would be safe.
For a little bit of back story. Maja lives with 2 other Australian Shepard’s, two cats, a 2 year old child and 2 adult humans. One of the adult humans has refused to fence in his yard for years. Despite the fact that one of the Aussies has only 3 legs from being hit by a car, and also seizures. He kept getting in a neighbors Koi pond until that neighbor finally put electric fencing around it. Except not the kind for dogs, the kind for cows. The dog was found in a quivering heap.
The female adult human in this family found out she had fallopian tube cancer 2 years ago when she delivered her baby. A year later she went to pick out a puppy and brought home two.
I can tell you as a trainer that it is very hard to train 2 puppies at the same time. Even with mad skills and all the time in the world. No way can you do it with cancer, a 2 year old and a busy life.
So the dogs ran feral. These humans live a bit outside the city in a little burb where everyone has at least 5 acres and there are wild animals like cows, horses and goats and such. The dogs swam in a cow pond most days so were way too stinky to be let in the house, even if they were trained.
So they got more and more feral as time went. But oh so loveable. Recently the female human’s cancer came back. Coming home from a chemo treatment she drove into her driveway with all 3 of her dogs swirling around her car. The neighbor dog joined it.
That’s when the unfortunate couple walked by and all 4 dogs chased them and Maja bit the woman on the leg, twice. Bad Bites. One was a rip and tear. Bigger than a 50 cent piece and you could see down to muscle.
Even before this all happened they knew they had a problem with their dogs and the plan was I would take each one for a month and train it, and then work with the owners. The new plan was that I would start with Maja. But first she had to go to the vet for quarantine for rabies. The bite occurred in another county so she had to be quarantined there.
The staff loved her, but were very concerned about her weight as I always have been. She is emaciated. I always attributed that to the fact that her humans just filled bowls for all 3 dogs and went away not watching them eat. So, Maja’s sister is very chubby while she is thin.
They had taken her to the vet in January for her thinness and their vet had her on puppy food and the chubby dog was losing weight. Still Maja wasn’t gaining. I prepared a concoction of food to take to the vet with her and weighed her when she got there and when I picked her up.
With so much food and so little activity she should have gained weight. She lost almost 2 pounds. That vet suggested that she may have EPI Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency. It means she can’t digest her food and is literally starving to death.
And while it is treatable it is VERY expensive to treat. It’s a lifelong condition, I’m guessing at $500 a month to treat from the HOURS of reading I’ve done on it. Maja goes to my vet this afternoon to be tested for it.
In the meantime Maja’s humans have decided that they are not comfortable with her coming home after biting someone so badly because they have a 2 year old. They’d like me to keep her as my dog.
I love this dog, I’ve known her since she was 10 weeks old, but I’m not sure I can take on the expense of another dog, a normal healthy dog, I know I can’t take on the expense of a dog with a chronic illness. I just don’t have the money.
I wrote about stress and cancer last week. About how stressful cancer is and how I try to minimize it.
This situation has added to my stress greatly. I have spent hours reading medical journals on EPI. I have consulted with another trainer about Maja’s behavior. I have been working for over an hour every day with her on sits, stays, downs and bite inhibition. Twice I had to drive the 40 miles to the county vet for her AND still go to work. I’m pretty stressed about this. I want to just sit in the sun and read fiction.
Plus there is a nagging worry in the back of my head that I can’t have a one year old dog who may live 15 or so more years because I won’t live that long because of cancer. Even though there is no evidence of cancer right now, it’s hard to convince myself.
I have someone who will take my dog and cats if anything happens to me but I can’t add another dog to their burden as well. Life with my own dog and 3 cats is relatively stress free, though we have our moments. I will figure this out and it too will pass. Soon, I hope, I am beat!
How has cancer affected your long term thoughts on pets?
Monday Night Cancer Club is a Daily Kos group focused on dealing with cancer, primarily for cancer survivors and caregivers, though clinicians, researchers, and others with a special interest are also welcome. Volunteer diarists post Monday evenings between 7-8 PM ET on topics related to living with cancer, which is very broadly defined to include physical, spiritual, emotional and cognitive aspects. Mindful of the controversies endemic to cancer prevention and treatment, we ask that both diarists and commenters keep an open mind regarding strategies for surviving cancer, whether based in traditional, Eastern, Western, allopathic or other medical practices. This is a club no one wants to join, in truth, and compassion will help us make it through the challenge together.