Miss Tracer came to us on a whim :D we passed a place where the humane society was having an "adoption fair" type thing. I wanted to go save one! As soon as we turned the corner we saw her. We knew she was our baby! Love at first sight! We went ahead and gave the other dogs a chance and made the rounds. We took our love home and she fit right in! She was a part of our family.
The next day she had diarrhea! I blamed it on the food switch and being that it was a Sunday I had to wait until the next day to take her to the vet anyway (I didn't think it was urgent enough to go to the emergency vet- it was just diarrhea!) Monday morning something just wasn't right! She threw up her breakfast, still had diarrhea, and was lethargic! I took her to the vet right away. I thought the the Dr. was joking when he told me she had a strong positive for parvo, and she would need to stay with him in quarantine. I even let out a "thats not funny" pity giggle. He wasn't. I was DEVASTATED! We already loved her. She was just that awesome. I was horribly misinformed in the past, as I had always heard that when a dog has parvo they have to be put to sleep immediately. I went home and sanitized the house for her return... just hoping for the best. I found out parvo (with treatment) was not as deadly as I had been told- had I known about this any sooner it could have saved us quite a bit of money AND saved poor tracer the stress of being all alone for 3 days at the vet. I could have been taking care of her myself!
This is where the trouble began.... the day after returning home from the vet, tracer started coughing. She was doing better- holding down tiny amounts of food at a time, and as long as we didn't let her gorge herself on water, she was holding that down pretty well too. Long story short (or at least just a little *less* long, haha) Tracers dx was Distemper. Next to rabies its possibly the most dreaded of all animal diseases! Distemper seriously, seriously weakens their immune system and although we kept the house very warm, she STILL developed pneumonia. It seems as though she was kept in a chilly room at the vet, possibly with a draft. Badbadbad! It was too late! pneumonia had already started to set in. I don't know why the vet didn't notice her nose running, or eyes watering, or maybe he did, but he didn't say a word to me about it! I took tracer back to the vet. He told me to keep feeding her bland and gave us antibiotics. What a smart man, i thought, even *I* know antibiotics don't do much good for viruses. I gave her one when I got home because I didn't know what else I could do. I did research and found there was a TON of things I could do!! Problem being... everything was a weeks delivery away. So in the meantime, since i found out antibiotics and prescriptions can actually mask the problem, and any other symptoms i should be on the lookout for, I stopped giving her those and started giving her colloidal silver, along with a little less than recommended human dose of vitamin c. I found out through research (and consulting people that knew a lot more than I did!!) that what I was doing for her just wasn't enough! As well as some of the things I thought were important, were actually the worst things to do. If you are interested in finding out the things I learned click the parvo or distemper links at the top! I ordered everything I could and started them all as soon as they came in the mail. Unfortunately since the parvo had already weakened her immune system so much, and it was already in advanced stages by the time I learned more about the illnesses, Miss Tracer didn't make it. Granted she did make it way longer than she would have and had a much greater chance of survival than others with the illness! What took her down was the pneumonia. The work of careless vets who made us sit outside (in the freezing cold!!) because she had such an awful virus. I understand it was our social responsibility to not let her track it in where all the others could get it, but I all but begged him to just let us have a room (it was a big vet building) and we wouldn't mind waiting in line! We weren't trying to jump ahead of everyone else! Anyway the pneumonia was making her cough and hack until she would literally fall down. She died of exhaustion. Distemper was the root cause, but the exhaustion from the pneumonia got the best of her.
Although I was her primary caregiver (my husband works during the day) Tracer was quite the daddy's girl! Anytime he was at work, anywhere she was, you could always find her curled up in his jacket. She missed him! She would go out of her way to locate that jacket- and curl up with it! I guess it smelled like him. It was hers now!
I came home from taking my husband to work one morning and Tracer was drooling. She tripped over a little picture box I had next to my desk and wobbled to the bedroom and plopped down on her blanket and Jon's (my husband) jacket. I turned around to answer my phone. It was my mom, she said she was just wondering how Tracer was this morning. I turned around to go give her the Tracer report, and Tracer was crying. It wasn't the normal crying she would do when she was hurting. It was continuous. It was her.... dying. I was home alone, and my baby had gone. We buried Tracer in the jacket, and with an armload of gumballs. Silly, I know, but it was so necessary to help us say goodbye. Shes playing with gumballs and chasing leaves (another favorite pastime of hers) in heaven now! We are determined your life wasn't a waste! We are dead-set on telling your story to help other animals overcome! We love you Tracer!
Its still excruciatingly painful to talk about... She took our hearts with her :(