Dealing with a Terminal Dog – Cheddar

This week has been full of ups and downs.  After returning from Orlando this weekend, where my family and I had a great time at SeaWorld, and where I was attending and speaking at the IzeaFest Conference, we discovered that our dog Cheddar, a golden retriever-dachsund mix, was not feeling to well.

Cheddar is a little over 9 years old.  We rescued her from the pound back in 2002, just before our 2nd child, Zoe was born.  We didn’t want our son Corbin to experience any jealousy with a new baby coming and he really wanted a dog that he could play with.

Cheddar was a great dog, even though when we rescued her, she was blind in eye as the result of an untimely cherry-eye operation before we found her.  She wasn’t too large and always excellent with our kids, even though about once a year she would mis-judge distances a bit and run into a wall or piece of furniture.

Over the years she only got better for the most part, even though she picked up a bad barking for no reason habit.  That mostly just made her an inside dog, which might have been part of her plan anyway.  All of our dogs have typically been inside dogs, with the option to use a doggie door more often than not.

Cheddar has never been to the vet other than to receive her yearly, tri-yearly shots.  She’s been a relatively low maintenance dog, and a good companion for us and the kids.

So when we came home to find her rather sickly it was a bit of a surprise.  We weren’t sure if she might have had a seizure of some type, slipped a disc in her back, or ate something.

A day later, she had not had a bowel movement, wasn’t drinking water, and ate, but would puke it up.

We thought she might have a blockage in her stomach, even though she has no history for eating or chewing on things other than her food.

I took her to the vet, and they did blood tests, fecal tests, and felt, massaged her stomach.  They couldn’t feel anything abnormal in her stomach, so we went for the initial phase of putting her on antibiotics and some supplements to help her digestion and we took a wait and see approach for 24 hours.

12 hours later she finally had a bowel movement, which seemed like a very good thing at the time.  Initially it seemed to rule out the stomach, intestine, bowel obstruction possibility.  But over the next 24 hours she didn’t seem to improve and at times seemed to feel worse.  She stopped drinking and her appetite was on and off again, which was not normal.

So we were now looking at the possibility of determining what we could do next. 

To figure out if she has a bowel obstruction, the first step is to do a normal set of X-Rays.  That would cost about $155 including the office visit.  Unfortunately, money is an object and not something we have unlimited quantities of these days, so we have to be very careful in what we spend on both any diagnosis or treatment and judicious that in spending money on Cheddar that we don’t take food out of the mouths of our kids.

We have a  house we can’t sell nor rent in Atlanta as the mortgage is upside down.  We’ve been stuck with it for 2 years and live in North Carolina.  Business for me has been growing steadily all year, but August was a very ugly month for business, and September was largely spent rebuilding business to make up for things.  Things are looking up, but cash flow has not caught us up for the down turn that hit us in August.  I do travel a lot for business, including the Orlando trip, and a future trip to Las Vegas.  These were paid for in advance last spring and summer when business was doing well.

Now, general X-Rays may not catch a blockage, short of something large and metallic or plastic, or rock like.  So if its a tumor or something of that nature, the next and likely step is a series of xrays using a barium dye.

This set of XRays would start at about $400 and could cost as much as $700.  It depends on how many X-Rays have to be done before either a blockage is found or a blockage is ruled out as the dye passes all the way through the intestine.

Now, if the X-Rays turn up a blockage, then the next step is surgery.

If the surgery can be formed by our local veterinary hospital, which means that it is a relatively simple surgery for a small obstruction and that if it is a tumor, it is an operable tumor as opposed to something large and growing in and around the stomach or intestines that if removed would prove fatal for Cheddar.

If it is simple enough, then our local veterinary hospital, which has been very understandable and not trying to push unnecessary procedures or tests on us at inflated prices, the surgery would likely total up to about $800-$900 on the low side.

The Dog Care Conundrum for Stomach Obstructions

So here is the problem.  Money is an object and is limited.

We can not afford the price for surgery if that is what Cheddar needs and if surgery is even possible.

We could afford some but not all of the tests in addition to the $225 we have already paid.  But to continue along with just the tests, we will eventually run out of money, and will have only made progress in figuring out what is wrong not how to cure Cheddar.

Cheddar does not seem to be in a great deal of pain yet, but if its a full on obstruction, eventually her systems will begin to fail and pain will be a likely symptom.

If we were to proceed with the all of the tests, they would accumulate to a likely cost of close to $1000.  That’s before we have even paid for the surgery, which itself would cost at least $800-$900.  If our vet is unable to do a complex surgery, a specialist would cost at least $1500 and maybe as much as $3k.

Unfortunately, none of those circumstances are possible.  Even if we had the cash, which we do not, I’m not sure that our decision would be to intercede.  If we were rich and had lottery money or something, we could afford to at least do the tests and figure out the real cause, but even then the surgery might end up being more pain inducing and problematic resulting in the same result.

So as it stands, we are currently still evaluating what to do.  We’re hoping that its not an obstruction, which since she has had some bowel movements, its possible that it is something else.  The most likely scenario is that she has some sort of tumor that is occasionally obstructing her bowels or causing some other problem.

It is a sad situation and our kids are having a tough time with Cheddar being lethargic, she seems relatively happy when she’s resting or laying around, but normally she doesn’t just lay around.  The other possibility is that she had a seizure or stroke and her body isn’t completely functioning correctly.  That is not something that an X-Ray can even identify, in fact it might not be something that can be diagnosed at all, short of another seizure taking place while the veterinarian is monitoring her.  So it could be that even if we did all the tests, we’d find absolutely nothing.

I’m not the type of person that likes to make decisions based on ignorance of the all of the facts, but in this case, gathering the facts is not in the cards, and even if I had all the facts, my choices would still be limited.