Posted by Dinah on June 28, 2009, at 3:50:00
My little dog with the chronic illness is not about to die, I don't think. I usually only put a dog to sleep if they are in pain and about to die.
And she gets worse slowly enough that there is no clear way to tell when it would be a kindness to her to not continue to try.
She just has not been the same since she had her eye removed. On the one hand she sees much better now, and generally does not have to follow against walls. On the other hand, the surgery seemed to have pushed her into a worse phase of her illness.
She needs prednisone twice a day now, although oddly enough she doesn't seem to be suffering from the bloating and all that prednisone comes with. She may have even lost a bit of weight.
And it seems that more times than not she has terrible trouble getting around. She falls over, or has periods where she flops like a landed fish for more than just a few seconds. She doesn't pick herself up and trot happily on her way when she finds her feet either. She sways or stands on the tops of her feet, which are starting to look like limp pasta for some reason. Her illness doesn't affect her bones, but still, her legs just look all soft and bent. She has trouble with forward momentum sometimes and scuttles backward when she obviously is trying for forward.
She perks up around bedtime, or if something pleasurably exciting happens. Then she manages to get around rather well. She doesn't get around even then as well as she used to, and no longer finds my husband to let her up on the bed. Sometimes she'll come when called, but sometimes she'll have trouble gaining the forward momentum to do more than circle in place.
I watched her trying to eat earlier, and was positive that now was definitely the time. She could barely gather the coordination to manage the movements involved and she kept flopping. But then by bed time, she managed to scootle as fast as her brother very effectively in the direction of the bed, and I thought this can't possibly be the time.
I don't like this kind of decision. It's too ambiguous, and I can't be sure what's best for her.
poster:Dinah
thread:903566
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20090624/msgs/903566.html