Trailing Thoughts

As you know, I lost my cocker spaniel, Molly in the beginning of December and I did get another cocker spaniel, Roxy in the middle of December. Roxy was a sweet baby. She was not really a lap dog unless she wanted to be petted, but she was adorable and she had an awesome personality. Luckey and her loved playing together. Unfortunately, I had to put Roxy to sleep on Wednesday. This was one of the most painful experience I have had in a long time. Roxy was only about 15 weeks old. Roxy did not get her shots at 5 to 6 weeks, which resulted in her contacting distemper, a virus that commonly affects dogs. Roxy was strong enough to fight off the virus for a while, but the virus attacked the linings of her brain, this lead to a post-distemper symptom of seizures, called chewing gum convulsions. During this time the dog looks like she is chewing gum, while foaming at the mouth and shaking. They also urinate and defecate while the seizure is happening. Afterwards, the puppy is very scared and disoriented. They are not in pain, but they have no idea what just happened and are scared. While this does not hurt, it does eventually cause brain damage. Roxy unfortunately, started to seizure about every 2 hours starting on Monday. I took her to the vet and they tried to find what is wrong with her, but because the type of the seizure, they said it was distemper, which to them was strange, because it is easily preventable with vaccines, and I brought her in for all her vaccines, but she did not get them when she was about 6 weeks old. My poor Roxy did not respond to any treatment and kept seizuring about every hour and a half, but we gave it a try… at the end the vet used the words ” It is not appropriate to let this puppy continue like this” and I felt horrible, but I wanted the best for Roxy… so it came time to say goodbye. This was harder than losing Molly because Roxy responded to us. She was happy to see us– she could not get up because the medications were so sedating, but she knew it was us. I was crying and she was trying to see why… Madhujit brought her a rawhide to chew on– which she loved– it was hard to say goodbye knowing besides the seizures, which would cause brain damage eventually, she was still my puppy… Molly was gone from this world even before I really made the decision, which in reality so was Roxy, but it was still hard. I know Molly will take good care of Roxy for me, but I miss them both.
This is an impossibly hard thing to do… it took time to recover from losing Molly and Roxy was giving me those memories, but I did not get that much time to form memories, but I am happy for the short time I had Roxy in my life. She could fall asleep in any position… and the funny puppy had some pretty bad gas. She would always go after whatever toy luckey wanted. She loved kissing everyone, especially on the mouth or nose… she would aim for it.
Please, any breeder that reads this, vaccinate your puppies. Roxy was an unfortunate loss that was unnecessary. Buyers, make sure your puppy gets all their shots. I have only had Roxy for about a month and I spent about $750 on vet bills, but most of that was trying to fight for the puppy’s life, and we were the losers. Your puppy is just like a little baby, you would never them go without shots.
I must say this about the breeder, she did try to make it right, but the best would be that this never would have happened at all… but she was following her vet’s advice and did not give them shots, while all the vets I spoke with are very upset that shots were not given at 6 weeks.
I cried for hours after I had to let Roxy go and I am still crying… but tears are ok… I loved Roxy… yes, she was a dog, but she was my baby… and I will miss her too…
I am waiting for a while before I get another dog…my heart has to recover and I have to have the time to devote to training. Busia is here all the time, but I can’t push an untrained dog on her… I will hurt for awhile and my life will seem empty without my babies, but eventually I will get another dog, not to fill the old places, but to make a new place for them.
In the meantime, I have Luckey, Madhujit’s dog, but she just way too big and independent to be my lap dog…