Sassy was born on January 24th, 2001. She was an adorable puppy with
ears too big for her own body.
My mother bought her and later we adopted her. When we adopted her we did not for
see her having any major health problems. We were shocked over the next 2
years at how many things happened to Sassy and wondered what else could go
wrong.
Sassy first got zinc poisoning in the fall of 2001, right before
Halloween. We had taken her
over to my Aunt’s house to play with her pug, Gretta. Pugs, you should know, will eat
pretty much anything in sight.
Well, she ate a penny.
Within a few hours her belly was full of hives and it was very hot
to the touch. After we
noticed the hives we looked at her face and it was swollen almost to the
point that her eyes were completely shut. We rushed her to the Animal
Referral Center and they gave her some shots and kept her overnight. The next morning I picked her up
and took her to our regular vet. only to find out she had eaten a penny
and had zinc poisoning. We
walked out with a healthy pug and empty pockets.
Within a month I woke up and noticed Sassy’s face was swollen once
again and rushed her to our vet’s office. We found out she had a little
tumor above her eye that must be taken out immediately. So, the next day she had surgery
to remove the tumor. Once
again, we walked out with a healthy pug, but empty pockets.
Sassy went until August of 2002 before having any other problems,
and then it struck. We went
to bed, Sassy nestled between us, and in the middle of the night Sassy
woke up wheezing (which we later found out was really reverse sneezing for
pugs, but sounds like wheezing).
She wouldn’t stop so we rushed her to the Animal Referral Center in
the middle of the night. They
gave her some medicine to relax the back of her throat in hopes she would
be able to rest, and so would we.
We found out she had an elongated soft palate, common in
short-snouted animals, especially pugs. She went under the knife, once
again, to fix this problem.
This surgery was, by far, the most expensive surgery she has had to
go through. The recovery time
was long and we had to try to keep her from barking, running, or
playing. Unfortunately, we
had just bought a new puppy and the puppy wanted to play.
Sassy stayed healthy until March of 2003. We have quite a lot of bushes in
our yard and Sassy likes to go to the bathroom by the bushes. (Pugs are obstinate dogs who must
go where they are not supposed to go.) She poked herself in the eye on a
bush and scratched her cornea.
We took her in and our normal vet. gave her some eye drops and we
put them in until we noticed her eye becoming more swollen and her
refusing to open it. On top
of that she would scratch it and whine while scratching. We took her to the Animal Referral
Center to see a dog optomologist.
He told us that she had a staph infection in her eye that had eaten
away half of her cornea in just a matter of DAYS! We were told we would have to give
Sassy lots of drops along with some oral medicine. The eye doctor then informed us
that if it doesn’t heal we would have no other choice but surgery because
the infection would continue to eat away at her eye and eventually spread
to the rest of her body. It
was at that point Matt and I decided that if the medicine did not work we
would have to put Sassy down.
We didn’t want to put her down, but she had been through surgery
three times prior and did not want to put Sassy through that again. We also worried that maybe she
would just continually have problems and it would be unfair to Sassy to
put her through the surgeries for our selfish attachment. Luckily, after a month of waking
up every hour at first to, at the end, every six hours to put drops in her
eye, the eye doctor informed us that her eye was completely healed. Relief washed over us, we had
Sassy in good health and we didn’t have to face saying goodbye to our baby
Sassy.