Rejection Letter

This morning we had a big scare.  It looked like Sammy was finally going to be accepted to college.  But we lucked out and despite some difficulty breathing that led to cardiac arrest Sammy’s application was denied.  He still could get in to another school so I am not bragging or thinking it won’t happen but as of now he is happy and resting at the vet.  As you may remember, my parents have already had three of us four-legged children go off to college – but they were all  over achievers when it comes right down to it.  Sammy is luckily not so bright…a late bloomer of sorts.  This lack of Sammy brain power will come back a little later as I tell the tale of The Morning of 5/29/15.

Today started pretty much as normal.  Mom woke up early and fed us and then went to do her exercises – after dealing with some work issues on her computer (people are always creating work for her)  🙂 .  Dad eventually got up and got us ready for our walk.  Since Mom’s work took a little longer than she anticipated we decided to just go around the short block.   About 50 feet from our front door Sammy started gagging and breathing hard.  By the time we got inside he had aspirated up some foamy stuff a couple of times.  Mom quickly deduced that he may be having trouble breathing (we had previously been told he may be suffering from idiopathic laryngeal paralysis).  Dad checked his tongue and sure enough his tongue was turning blue.  Then all of a sudden they both went into emergency mode.  Dad carried Sammy to our Honda Elephant and my mom reeled me in.  Off to the Emergency Vet we all went – but in two different cars.  Mom charted the way on her mapping app while Dad just took off.  Thanks to my navigation skills we took the express way and actually beat them to Blue Pearl.  Dad took back roads and hit some construction.  He may have exceeded the speed limit a couple of times and may have taken some liberties with the whole yellow vs red light thing (I got this from listening to Dad tell Mom why he was later than us).  He also said he tried blowing in Sammy’s nose a couple of times at red lights – his thought process being that it helped the Montana-like dog in Columbia.  Thank goodness for that video (assuming this did any good for Sammy…it at least made Dad feel like he was doing something while idling at the stop light).

Finally, they showed up at the Vet and Mom again took the initiative to get the vets prepared by letting them know there was a dog on the way that wasn’t breathing.  Since I was standing next to her they looked at her like she was kind of crazy…or was that because she was still in her exercise gear?  Anyhow, Sammy was still breathing in the car but was fading fast.  Dad carried him in and he was completely limp – which may have cut off his breathing, because by the time they got Sammy in the back room he was not breathing and his heart had stopped.  I am no doctor or physiologist but even I know this is not a good thing.  BTW – I really like breathing.  It is part of how I get all those good smells.  The doctor came out and let them know he was resuscitated but that it would be awhile before we could visit him.

This was a weird phase in my experience because we went and sat in this big room that reminded me of when I was getting heart worm treatment – a story for another time.  Dad even weighed me on their scale which was kinda strange.  There were a number of other dogs there but I was pretty much just in monitoring mode.  Sniffing a bit – because who doesn’t do that when they meet new people – but overall just chillin.   I could tell my ‘rents were kind of stressed and a little sad.  I chose to do what I know how to do to calm them…jump in Mom’s lap:

 

Eventually we were allowed to visit him while he was still on the doctor’s examining table.  Mom and Dad were trying to get his attention but he was still a little out of it but when I jumped up and put my front paws on the table he wagged that big ol’ tail of his and gave me kisses.  This made all the techs very happy to see how well we get along.  A quick aside: we just talked with the attending vet and she said Sammy is the star of the ER as not only is he smashingly gorgeous but he is one of their success stories which is apparently rare when it comes to canine resuscitation.

We then waited some more in the outer room and met some other dogs.

Before we left though we were allowed into say goodbye to Sammy.  This time he was in a crate and looking a lot more like himself.  He gave us all kisses and even gave us a couple of healthy head rubs and started making that raspy breathing which was like music to our ears after all that gasping he did before we got to the vets.  As we were leaving he started barking and carrying on which reminded my ‘rents of when he got tutored as a little boy (again a story for another time).

Tomorrow he is scheduled for a surgery so this doesn’t happen again.  His surgeon is getting ready to publish a clinical study on the subject of GOLPP but if you are interested here is a little more information on the condition:

https://purinaproclub.com/resource-library/pro-club-updates/laryngeal-paralysis-is-first-sign-of-general-neurological-paralysis

I am a bit at a loss this evening without him but I did get to “clean” the dishes by myself which was a real treat.

I’ll update you tomorrow with how he is doing and some of our other antics but I realize that this entry is getting awfully long and maybe not all that uplifting so I will end with just a couple of things that came to mind through this whole ordeal:

The first comes from Mark Twain:  “The reports of Sammy’s death have been greatly exaggerated” – okay, that isn’t a direct quote but you get the message.

Second comes from my favorite movie, The Princess Bride: “Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.”

We are excited to no end that Sammy was just mostly dead today!

Viva Sambuca!

Mo-tor

-after all that dictating I had to take a little nap…

before watching some hockey (Game 7’s are always exciting to me – no way I could sleep through the whole thing!) so I could update Sammy on the outcome tomorrow: