Day 7

Peanut's appointment at the vet this morning didn't go terribly, but the news isn't exactly uplifting either. His kidneys are failing pretty severely. His Creatinine is 3.3 and normal limits are .5-1.8, his BUN is 103 and normal limits are 7-27, and his Alk Phos is 873 and normal limits are 23-212. The first two are kidney functions and the last one is a general liver function. They wanted to put him on doggy-ibuprofen and medicine for doggy-Alzheimer's but not with his kidneys and liver in such bad shape. His thyroid has been out of whack for a couple of years and he's been on doggy-Synthroid since, and the thyroid test results will be back tomorrow. If that's abnormal that may explain the liver function being high, but I doubt it. His thyroid's been pretty well controlled with the doggy-Synthroid. I think his liver is just aging. I think (actually, I know) that he is aging and it breaks my heart to watch. It will be 14 years this weekend before Thanksgiving that I brought him home as a baby 10 week old puppy. He was so funny on the ride up to Appleton from Milwaukee: he sat all curled up in the backseat of my Nissan Sentra, minding his own business, not really sure what to think of me yet. Then on the way back to Milwaukee on Sunday he crawled from the backseat onto my lap and made himself to home, and that was that. He literally crawled his way into my heart and has been there solidly for 14 years. Some people don't understand my devotion to Peanut, but in my mind he's the only child I'll ever have. If he were a human he would have started 9th grade this fall: that puts it into perspective for a lot of people instead of saying, "Well, he's 14 years old." The vet is confident we're talking about a matter of weeks or months in terms of his quality of life and his life expectancy. She gave me some signs to look for including him not being interested in his food, vomiting, and pulling away from the family. Somehow I always thought that I'd know...I'd just intrinsically know when it was time...that he'd look into my eyes and would say to me, "Mommas, it's time." That hasn't happened yet, but now I have to be on the look-out and ever vigilant for those signs. I still think he'll tell me in his own way. Until then, I'll just love him the best that I can.

If there's a dog in your life...

Enjoy.