**Warning: Post gets incredibly vivid on descriptions and may not sit well with sensitive stomachs.**
You never know how your life is going to change when you get involved in what I affectionately call “the Dog World.” Little did I know what lay in store for me getting into showing and (quite possibly) breeding purebred dogs. The trials and the tribulations involved in having intact animals in my home and the quandaries associated with them. Such was the case just a little over two weeks ago when what I thought was going to be a routine vet visit for a urinary tract infection or bladder infection on my darling little pistol, Lyric, turned out to be so much more.
I took Lyric to my phenomenal vet, Hoover Road Animal Hospital, on Tuesday, March 6th. She’d urinated in her crate three times in the span of about an hour and a half. [Note: We crate and rotate due to compatibility issues with a couple of the dogs – makes life simpler when they’re not crabbing at one another and it was another dog’s turn.] The first time she did it, I wasn’t incredibly concerned because she’s always been a dirty dog and not had a problem urinating in her crate but after the 2nd (and eventual 3rd that happened not even 20 minutes after changing out her blankets and cleaning out her crate one more time!) I was incredibly alarmed. The first time, her urine smelled fine. It smelled like normal dog pee (yes, I know…weirdo knows what their dog’s urine smells like) but the final two times before we made the end of day trip to see our vet, her urine smelled off. Pungent and almost infection-smelling – but it wasn’t watery, it was heavily concentrated. Quite honestly, it was gross smelling and I had a hard time handling the smell. (It quickly became one of a handful of smells I can’t stand and almost make me want to vomit.)
Doc took her temperature and it was incredibly high – like concernedly high. He gave her a fever reducing injection and we talked about our options. Since she’d urinated on their floor, she had no more urine left to give a sample, but he didn’t want to send us home without starting her on antibiotics simple because we couldn’t run an analysis. So, armed with a prescription for cephalexin we went home. There was concern that it wasn’t a bladder infection or UTI but I was told to come back if there were any changes – unfortunately, those concerns became incredibly valid not even 24 hours later.
We started her immediately on the medications after picking them up from the pharmacy (Yay for $4 generic prescriptions at Kroger for dogs now!). The following afternoon when we’d come home from work, I took her out on our potty run (we couldn’t see anything that morning since we leave for work at 4am most days) and she was oozing pus out of her vulva. We made the call to get her back in immediately and an eternity later and a bazillion worrying tests later (okay, so it wasn’t that many, but I never felt so worried in my life over this little hellhound) the determination was pyometra and the fix was an emergency spay.
My life and hers changed so quickly. Never would we have expected to have her show career cut off at the knees by Mother Nature, but I’m glad I still have my girl and she’s safe and sound and on the road to recovery. While Mother Nature had other plans for her, forcing us to drastically change ours, it also opened up so many more opportunities that wouldn’t have existed prior to that.
It is really true that when one door closes, another opens. I’m eternally grateful to everyone who has been so supportive of her and me during this entire ordeal. I would never wish this on anyone in a lifetime – it has become one of the scariest things I’ve gone through since making the decision to maintain intact dogs – and since we’ve had to walk through a new door and onto a new path in life we walk with uncertainty in our plans ahead but keeping in mind that we have each other and hundreds of new things to try, train, and excel at and a gratefulness that my little demon princess was not ripped from my arms and taken across the Rainbow Bridge before she’d had time to finish her reign of terrier terror on this plane. I ultimately learned to never distrust my senses in knowing that there wasn’t something quite right with my dog and her behaviors and am blessed to have such a phenomenal bond with her and the rest of the Wolf Moon pack.
To many, many more years of learning and living together, Lyric. I love you with all of my heart and while we may walk a new path, we will do it together into eternity.