Change of plans.

May 1, 2009 annora
Tags: Chewy, Drew, Puppy, Ziggy

While I’ll still post about WoW sometimes, I’m just going to use this as a personal blog about random shit that pertains to my life.

So, hot topic of the now? My puppy. Her name is Chewy, and she’s a 5 month old Karelian Bear Dog/Alaskan Malamute cross. She’s got quite the personality, she talks a lot, howls, loves to play and cuddle and kiss. I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better dog.

Rrrrlllaaauuuuggggllll

Last November (that’d be in 2008), our previous dog, Ziggy, became rather ill. Her belly bloated up with fluid in a mere matter of days. Naturally, we were concerned. Ziggy was a Husky/Border Collie cross, she was a slim and active dog, and only 8 years old. We took her to the vet, where he advised us to leave her overnight so they could drain the fluid and x-ray her to see if there were any serious problems inside.

Later that night, he called to tell me that the x-ray had shown a rather large tumour on her spleen. He assured me that it was removable, and he could operate on her early the next morning. I agreed, telling him we wouldn’t spare any expense on getting our dog healthy again.

The next phone call I received was at 9:30 am the next morning. It was, of course, the same vet. He had opened Ziggy up, and found a mass situated near a cluster of blood vessels. He gave me an option, he could close her up and pray it was nothing, or he could biopsy it to find out if it was malignant, and think of treatments thereafter. I told him to biopsy it, and it’s a decision I regret from the bottom of my heart.

I received another call not 15 minutes later from a woman who told me she was one of the attending surgeons to Ziggy’s operation. She said that something had gone wrong when he tried to biopsy the mass, her artery had been nicked and she was bleeding to death on the operating table. She asked me for permission to euthanize our dog.

I was dumbstruck, the idea that Ziggy, so full of zest, was dying was too much for my brain to process at that time. I told her to hold on, and I walked into my bedroom where Drew was sleeping.

“Drew,” I said softly as I prodded his shoulder gently, tears streaming down my face. “Drew, wake up. I need you to make this decision for me.”

“What?” he asked sleepily, blinking at me.

“The vet is on the phone… Ziggy… He found another tumour, and when he tried to biopsy it, he nicked her artery and now… she’s bleeding to death, and they want the okay to euthanize her.” I was having a hard time getting the words out. Drew looked at me for a moment, processing the information, and his eyes began to well up with tears.

“I can’t…” he started to sob, and ashamed of himself, he ran to the bathroom. The decision was left to me. Shakily, I lifted the phone to my ear again.

“You can euthanize her only as an absolute last resort. You have to do everything you can to save her. I don’t want you to put her to sleep unless you’ve exhausted all other options, okay?” I couldn’t see anymore, the tears were just flowing out of me and I could feel the lump in my throat threatening to choke me. She assured me they would do everything in their power to save Ziggy.

What seemed like an eternity later, but was really only 15 minutes or so, they called again… it was the man, our vet, this time. He told me that they had managed to slow the bleeding, but any movement she would have made would open the vein up again, and she’d bleed to death internally. He said he regretted to inform me that my dog was dead, everything else after that was kind of a blur. I couldn’t really hear him, I couldn’t absorb anything he was saying. In a kind of irrational moment, I asked if he could keep her there so I could see her again. He said he could do that for me, apologized again, and let me go.

Drew was back in the bedroom by this point. I walked into the living room, grabbed Ziggy’s favourite ball, and then headed back to bed. I crawled in, Drew wrapped his arms around me, and we cried together.

I did call them back later that afternoon and asked them to have her cremated, but set a portion of the ashes aside for spreading. They did just that, too. When we went to pick her up and pay, we were pleasantly surprised that the vet had not charged us for Ziggy’s surgery, or her euthanasia. We payed for her overnight stay, her x-ray, and her cremation.

Ziggy

The following weeks were bleak. Our house felt empty. I missed her so much, but it was nothing compared to what Drew was feeling. Ziggy was one of the last things he had that connected him to his late father, and her sudden death left him empty and lethargic. I knew the signs of depression, and Drew was deep in it. It was then that I got the idea to look for a puppy. A puppy we would have for a few years definitely, we only got to be with Ziggy for a year and a half.

I started to look online and in the papers we had here for a puppy that would suit us. We thought about many different breeds, great danes, mountain dogs, mastiffs, rottweilers… we kept coming back to this one breed, though, the Karelian Bear Dog. A few weeks later, I found an ad on Kijiji for “Malakare Puppies.” I immediately contacted the breeder and asked for pictures and information. She sent me pictures of the 4 puppies that weren’t spoken for so far. I found out she was a Karelian Bear Dog breeder in Likely BC, and every few years she’d cross breed with her Alaskan Malamutes because the end result was a wonderful animal.

There were three females and a male to choose from.
Coel
This was the first, Coel. The runt of the litter.

She was spoken for mere hours after I received the e-mail, Callista. She looked most like a Malamute.

Cardea
Cardea was one of our final choices, I loved her ears.

Calix
And the only male in her entire litter, Calix. He looked most like a bear, and was incredibly adorable… but I didn’t want a male dog.

Our first choice was Callista, but she was already spoken for, so it came down between Coel and Cardea. We spent a good 2 hours comparing the two pictures, and finally Drew settled on Coel. He decided to name her Chewbacca because of the white stripe on her chest that looked like a bandolier. I said Chewy was a fantastic name, and we let Valarie (the breeder) know which one we wanted. She shipped her out on a plane the next Monday with Cardea and Calix. An elderly couple from Parksville had bought the other two.

It was instant love between Drew and Chewy, and he regained that spark of life in his eyes. He’s been happy ever since. We take her to puppy class every Tuesday where she’s learning the basics of being a good dog. So far she can sit, lay down, shake a paw, ring a bell to go out, and wait to take food until we tell her to. She learns quickly, and she’s wowed us with her intelligence. She’s grown exponentially in the past few months. For a runt of the litter, she certainly got huge fast. Last time we took her to the vet, two weeks ago, she was 56lbs. Tomorrow, I’m pretty sure she’ll weigh in over 60. Full grown, she’ll be pushing 100lbs.

So yeah, there’s the story of our adorable Chewy, and the heartache that fueled our decision to get her. We still mourn for Ziggy, but we know that she’s with Don, her true master, wherever she is now.