Dear old Diez...

Poor old Diez is still not so great.

After my last post he got a lot worse and I was driving to Kal to pick husband up from the airport so took him back to the vet. This time I saw a different vet who was very thorough, she started an assessment from scratch and gave me quite a poor prognosis. I knew in my heart anyway that he was looking pretty awful, I really thought he would die that day. He was having difficulty breathing, he had a really high temperature and was really quiet. I left him at the vet for a barrage of tests and went to collect Wayne from the airport - As soon as I saw Wayne I burst into tears .... it seemed so much to deal with on my own and the few days before hand had been awful... I was a mess!

Anyway, the tests basically showed he had a raging infection but they weren't really sure of the exact focus, so we took him home on industrial strength doses of antibiotics, with the plan of returning in a few days if he hadn't improved. I left for Bali two days later and husband took over while I was away. I felt incredibly guilty leaving them - both husband and Diez.

Diez wound up having surgery to explore what was causing the swelling and infection in his throat. Post op Wayne said he looked a bit better for a few days, but now seems to be on a bit of a patchy down hill slide, although sometimes he has times where he wags his tail and will even get up and wander around sniffing things like he used to. Most of the time he lays on his bed looking quite sad and thats the heart breaking bit.

The vets are baffled and think its perhaps a combination of problems - a bad infection which has now progressed to Kidney failure - he's no spring chicken so his Kidney function was already a bit marginal and the infection has most likely exacerbated this.

The Vets in Kal (Robyn and Lauren) have been awesome.
They sound like they genuinely care and have been so understanding through our tears and questions. Today I spoke to Robyn at length about being stressed over the decision to Euthanize Diez. Are we being selfish by keeping him alive?? I want to do things for his best interest - not ours. She was fantastic and said we would just 'know' if and when the time was right, not to stress about it, but to spend our time with him loving him and continuing to give him the best care we can.

I know it's probably hard for most people to understand how upset and emotional I am about this, and to be honest I'm a bit confused myself at my reaction, but to Wayne and I our dogs have never just been 'dogs'... they are our family, our furry slobbering children, we are a team of four and I want it to stay that way.