Rudy's unfortunate adventure.

If you don't own a dog, you probably won't understand. But, Rudy is our kid. Ben and I do not have nor are we planning on having kids. Rudy came into our life just over a year and a half ago and stole our heart. Every time he looks at you, all you can see in his eyes is absolute and unconditional love. His life revolves completely around us, waiting for us to come home, the pure joy and excitement that you're greeted with every time you come home (although sometimes overwhelming), and his walks/runs. He is my training partner on my long runs, my faithful companion on the cold winter mornings, laying faithfully beside me while I bike for hours on the trainer or study all day.

Although he is 55 pounds, he loves nothing better than to curl up on your lap and be carried on your hip. He is a trooper, and has fit right in with our family. He loves camping because we sleep on the floor with him, he's kept up on our 35 kilometer backpack trips and our 4 hour runs like a champ, and he turns 2 years old on Sunday.

Although he seems to take after me. The last year has not been without his share of bad luck. Back in April he was impaled at the dog park. He tends to jump/bounce through the bushes, and he jumped right on to a inch wide tree trunk which had been cut/broken. The stick went right into his belly, and he let out a loud yelp. Off to the vet het went, surgery, stitches, drainage tube later, turns out the stick went about 6 inches into him, luckily missing any major arteries and organs. The day after his surgery we stepped out for a bit and came home to Rudy with his cone off and his stitches removed. Off to the emergency vet at 11 pm in Downtown Calgary. They removed the broken piece of drainage tube that remained inside him, stitched him up and home we went. Luckily, he healed perfectly after that.

With a sigh of relief, hoping that would be all, a real nightmare began. About a month ago, for no reason whatsoever I decided to take Rudy with me to drop my nephew off. When we got home, I was a little stressed thinking about everything I was planning on doing that afternoon, and Ben was out helping my mom move. Rudy jumped out of the car, and with my hands full I hip bumped the car door closed only to her the most awful scream/whine sound come out of Rudy. I threw the stuff down, clawed at the door to open it, which had of course locked behind me. Frantically searching for my keys, Rudy decided to take matter into his own hands paws and pulled his tail out of the door, and then ran into the house bleeding profusely. It was only the very tip, maybe inch or so that was bleeding, but he was shaking. I went to try and stop the bleeding when I noticed a little piece of bone sticking out the end. So I wrapped it in paper towel so he wouldn't bleed all over the car, and got him back to the emergency vet since it was Sunday. They did surgery to remove the damaged piece of his tail, and he came home all drugged up. By Wednesday we had run out of pail killers and we came home to a very sore puppy, back to the emergency vet we went to get painkillers as our vet wouldn't see us so last minute before they closed. The following week, the day before he was supposed to get his stitches out, he once again decided to take matters into his own hands paws and ripped the stitches out him self. Thanks Rudy. The end of the bone popped out of the skin, as the vet hadn't left enough soft tissue between the end of tail and the incision, and it was infected despite the antibiotics, back to the emergency vet he went. They did another surgery, removing about 4-5 inches of his tail, they kept him over night and Ben got to go pick him up at 4 in the morning.

However, our dog is Houdini, and managed to remove his cone nearly every day while we were at work and get at his tail. Finally last Tuesday, my lovely sister went to check on him and he had gotten at his tail again, but it wasn't looking so good by this point, so she took him to the vet. The vet recommended that he get his tail docked since it had been a month up to this point, then they forwarded us a quote for $1600.00, over what the other 2 surgeries were combined. Now we knew that our vet was very expensive and we had been meaning to find a new vet but we just hadn't gotten around to it. Well that was the last straw, and we found the Cochrane Animal Clinic, who have been absolutely fantastic and were nearly half the price. They did the procedure on Thursday, but then on Monday I picked him up from the Springbank day care who had been keeping an eye on him while we were at work, and I knew something wasn't right. He didn't want to move much, and appeared to be in tremendous pain. I phoned to see if they had given him his pain medicine and they had. So I went up to change his bandage, and as soon as I saw his tail I knew it was bad. The very end had turned black, the rest was quite red and bleeding, and he nearly puked he was in so much pain. He wouldn't walk, and was shaking. I phoned the vet, and despite them closing in 20 minutes they brought him right in. As soon as the vet saw the wound, my heart sank. He now has a very serious, and aggresive infection, he had a very high fever and the end of his tail has turned necrotic. They gave him an injection of pain meds and antibiotic, sent us home with double his pain meds, and additional antibiotics with instructions to get his fever down, and the swelling out of the tail. So here we are, Ben and I are alternating days off as Rudy is too sick to be left alone or go to daycare. He has a schedule of drugs to take, his temperature has to be checked religiously, and we have to run his tail under ice cold water every hourish. He'll have a spurt of energy, followed by hours of not wanting to move. All we can do right now is keep him comfortable and wait. Luckily we had some vacation days left over from last week so we're using them up to be with him.

What we learned from all of this:

1) Shop around for vets. Seriously that may sound bad, and trust me the first vet certainly tried to give me a guilt trip about going elsewhere and the care he'd receive. But we have found the most amazing vet, and will probably never return to his old one.

2) Tail docking, while it's pretty controversial, I think there is merit. In fact while I was emphasizing how bad I felt as this all started with me not paying attention the vet talked about how many dogs this happens too.. maybe not to this extent, but how many get their tails caught in doors, and tail injuries are THE WORST!

3) It's hard to take time off of work for your dog, but sometimes it is necessary.

4) Post surgery, or if your dog needs monitoring see if you can find a day care that can make special arrangements to keep him quite and keep an eye on him. We used a kennel/daycare combined facility that worked well.

5) It's ok to ask for help. My mom took Rudy to the appointment to get his tail docked, and my sister would periodically check on him. It's ok to not be able to do it all.

So I'll leave you with Rudy, where he was happy on our 3 day backpacking trip, and a prayer for him.

Heavenly Father,
You created all things for your glory
And made us stewards of this creature.
Please restore Rudy
to health and strength (as he want's to get back to our adventures asap!)
Blessed are you, Lord God,
And holy is your name for ever and ever.
Amen.