I don't know if I am looking for advice or sympathy or just need somewhere to talk about dog stuff with dog people, but here is what is happening . . .
We are dog-sitting my partner's parents dog, Wiggs, while they are overseas and not due to come back for about three more weeks. He's an ancient little bitser (probably some Chi in there and I think Pom, but def not a purebred and he weighed in at 4.9 kilos today). They've had him for about 15 years and he was probably at least 2 years old then so he's easily 17 or 18 years old.
Despite his age he is a bouncy little guy, always on the move checking things out. When I bring him his food every morning he literally bounces along and does a little dance on his hind legs in anticipation.
Until yesterday.
He was asleep when I brought his food out, which was weird but I thought we all like a sleep-in every now and again. I woke him up and he wandered over to his food and stared blankly at it. I thought it was because he'd just woken up. I went inside and did the usual - gave our dog his brekky and made my coffee - and when I went out Wiggs had eaten most of his food. I took it away because we don't let the two of them have food together, they both get grumpy about it.
This morning he was asleep again and when I woke him up he just stared at me. I picked him up and brought him over to the food and he couldn't even stand up. He kept falling into a 'sit' and trying to get up and then it was almost like one of his paws wasn't doing what he wanted - he kept falling sideways as he tried to walk. Now I was getting a little worried but chalked it up to him being old and awoken abruptly.
Then I noticed the vomit. I asked around, no one had fed him anything weird. My housemate said he'd been pretty nonresponsive the day before and mostly just laid around, not his usual curious self.
So I took him to the vet, of course. They took his temp (he did perk up and bolt a bit when they stuck the thermometer up his bum) which was very low and said they'd like to keep him for blood work and observation. This is not our dog so we are making these decisions for someone else. OH still considers him to be 'his' dog in a sense as he did grow up with him so we decided that we would make the decisions assuming if his parents cracked it when they got home, then we'd be prepared to wear the cost.
Blood work, possible IV fluids etc. looking to be about $300-400. Cool. We'd do it for our dog, we'll do it for this dog.
Now apparently he has vomited again at the vet's but it had bits of tan bark and bone in it. Both of these things are in our garden so he's obviously eaten them there. They think something may be lodged in his intestine and causing an infection so they are doing x-rays and might have to do surgery. Which now brings the cost up to $1,000 plus. We are still waiting on the x-ray results before they even decide if they can do surgery, and even if they do there is always risk of problems or just Wiggs being too old to pull through.
Also, the vet said he heard quite a heart murmur so even if he does pull through all of that he will probably be on heart medication for the rest of his life.
Our main justification has been that if our dog needed the same attention, we'd gladly pay for it. But the key difference is that our dog is about six years old and Wiggs is OLD.
Part of me says that if there is even the slightest chance of him getting better then we should opt for the surgery, and part of me says that we shouldn't put the poor old boy through all of that as he is certainly at the twilight of his life anyway. But he really has always been just a bouncy, happy dog and he may pull through fine and go back to his silly little self.
Guess I just needed to vent, but if anyone has been in a similar situation or has any advice to offer I would certainly love to hear about it.
