The Dog Knows Best

Usually Chris takes care of the dogs every morning of the work week, which means that he takes them outside and prepares their breakfast in addition to getting himself ready for work. As someone who needs less sleep than I do, Chris is also responsible for making sure I’ve gotten out of bed and have managed to stay upright long enough to dress myself.

Yesterday, though, Chris had an early morning meeting at work, so he only had time to let the dogs outside and back indoors before he had to leave.

When I got up half an hour later, I decided to let the dogs outside again while I got their breakfast ready. Mina had disappeared, presumably back into her warm bed, so only Flacko and Paco ventured outside. Neither one bothered to walk off the deck, so I called them inside to eat.

As Paco was walking toward me, I noticed he was hobbling slightly. His back legs seemed to be too close to his front legs. Paco and Mina have both had luxating patella issues, wherein the kneecap slips out of joint briefly. The dogs don’t seem to be in pain when this happens, but they have trouble walking until the knee slips back in place on its own. We give them supplements that seem to help prevent this sort of thing, but Paco’s problem today didn’t look like his usual one.

At any rate, he still gobbled down his breakfast when I put his bowl down with Flacko’s bowl. Mina was still in bed, but lately she hadn’t been eating breakfast anyway, so I wrapped up her portion for later. After eating, Paco walked gingerly around the room, eventually stopping to sit and rest.

Now I was really nervous, because one of the symptoms of Pedro’s myasthenia gravis, which I hadn’t known was a symptom until after his death, was that Pedro would get very tired and suddenly sit down while on walks and refuse to proceed any further.

As in all times of crisis, I called Christopher.

“Did you notice Paco walking funny this morning?” I asked him.

“A little bit,” he said. “But I just figured he didn’t want to walk on the wet grass.”

“Well, now he’s walking like he can’t move well. Almost like he really needs to poop.”

“Let him out, then,” he suggested. “Can he go up and down the stairs?”

I let Paco outside again. Paco stood at the top of the deck stairs, and I carried him down. He hobbled around the yard before coming back to the stairs and dubiously eying them. Tentatively, he placed a paw on the bottom step, then hopped up quickly.

“He can go up and down, but he doesn’t seem to want to,” I reported back. “Maybe I better call the vet.”

“Okay, my meeting’s about to start. Leave me a voicemail when you know what’s going on, okay?”

I hung up with Chris and called the vet. I didn’t think the vet would be able to find anything wrong, but I knew Paco was sick. He just wasn’t behaving normally. As I pressed the buttons on the phone, Paco was settling down on the bunny chair, staring at the wall.

The vet had an opening at 10, so I carried Paco to the couch to sit with me for a little while until we had to leave. Mina, of course, chose that moment to stroll out of her room. She looked at me, yawned, and then went to check out her brothers’ empty breakfast bowls.

Apparently Mina felt she could place an order for breakfast whenever she felt like it. Continental breakfasts between 8 and 8:30 AM were for weaklings. Mina gave me a meaningful look, and then deliberately licked one of the empty bowls. I correctly interpreted this as indicating she would like her breakfast now.

I put down her bowl in front of her, and she licked her way through it rapidly. Paco sick? Well, maybe he should have gotten sick before he’d eaten; then she would have helped with cleaning out his bowl.

I called work to let them know I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to come in yet, and drove to the vet with Paco.

Paco knew the vet. Paco didn’t like the vet. And Paco was plenty mad at me for bringing him to the vet, to the point where he was perfectly willing to behave normally if it meant leaving faster. The vet suspected tendonitis, but said that Paco was walking normally right now and to keep an eye on him.

Paco and I went home, and I stayed home to watch him. He had no interest in eating, drinking or going outside, and it was only with great effort that I managed to convince him to sit on my lap and take occasional sips of water.

When Chris got home from work, he took over watching Paco. Paco was able to walk on his legs, but he acted as though he didn’t want to. He didn’t seem to be in pain when we touched his legs, but there was definitely something wrong with him. He was nervous when the other dogs approached, and cried out when they got too close to him.

“Maybe we should have him sleep in a crate in our room tonight,” I suggested tentatively. “Just to keep the other dogs away from him?”

“No,” Chris said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

When bedtime rolled around, though, Chris seemed a little nervous. He put the dogs to bed and shut the door. Then he brushed his teeth. Then he opened the door again to look at Paco. Then he went upstairs to bed.

A few minutes later, Chris called down to me, “Could you just check on Paco?”

I opened the door to the dog room, where Flacko and Mina had already tucked themselves away into various beds and blankets. Paco, however, was sitting on the futon, staring blankly at me.

“He’s just sitting on the futon,” I reported. I noticed a wet spot on the blanket, but figured Paco had just been licking his paws or something, and inadvertently gotten the blanket wet.

I left the room and went downstairs to get a drink of water. I also got a dog dish and filled it with water, thinking that maybe I needed to move Paco to our room.

I opened the dog door again. Paco was still sitting on the futon, but now he had two wet spots under him.

“He still hasn’t moved,” I yelled to Chris. “And I think he’s drooling or something.”

Chris came downstairs to investigate the drool. I pointed out the drool spots, being careful to claim another wet spot as “just my wet hands–I dripped on the blanket by accident.”

Wary of all the attention he was getting, Paco tried to creep further into the blanket on the futon and into the purple sack bed. Flacko was already inside, though.

“C’mon, Flacko,” Chris urged. “Come out and try this other bed!”

Chris pulled the bed shaped like a miniature house toward Flacko. No dice; Flacko knew a good thing when he had it.

“Why do we have to make Flacko move?” I asked. “Why don’t we just put Paco in the house?”

“C’mon, Paco,” Chris said.

Paco crept off the futon, but all of Chris’s attempts to get him in the house just scared Paco into the brown bed instead. Chris picked up the bed and carried it, and Paco, upstairs while I brushed my teeth.

When I got upstairs, Paco was sitting on the bed next to Chris.

“Hey!” I said. “I thought we were putting Paco on his bed on the floor?”

“Well, he doesn’t want to sit in there, see?” Chris put Paco on the floor, and immediately Paco’s toenails were clattering on the wood floor as he ran around the bed, looking for a way up.

Chris put one of his pillows on the floor.

“Try this, buddy,” he urged.

Paco sat on the pillow, but was not convinced that it was better than being on the actual bed itself.

Chris lifted Paco back onto the bed. “Well, he just wants to sleep here.”

I sighed, and shut off the light. Paco was curled up against Chris and I was on the other side of Chris, so I couldn’t really complain that Paco was bothering me.

As a matter of fact, Paco’s presence in the bed was suprisingly less disruptful than I’d anticipated. Unfortunately, I’d been having a bad bout with insomnia lately, so I just lay quietly in bed.

After an hour or so, Chris had fallen asleep and started snoring. The low rumble of his snores filled the room, but then the volume began increasing. Eventually, it happened:

“Guh….bzzz…guh…bzz..bzzz…BZZZ..SNERK! (cough) SNORK! Whuh?”

Yes, he had snored so loudly that he had woken up not only Paco, but himself.

Paco screamed a little, as Paco is wont to do when being abruptly awakened by a Giant Monster Snore Involving Chest Heaves.

“Sorry, buddy!” Chris mumbled.

Smartly, Paco scrambled to the top of Chris’s pillow to try to fall back asleep.

Another hour or so later, Chris had fallen back asleep. Chris tends to move around while he sleeps, and unfortunately for Paco, Chris flung his arm out and whacked Paco on his head.

Paco squealed.

I decided this was a good opportunity to use the bathroom downstairs. When I came back into the bedroom, Paco was lying on my pillow.

“Hey, how did Paco get on my side?” I asked Chris.

“He’s tricky like that,” Chris muttered.

I tried to fall asleep. It wasn’t easy though. Paco was perched on my head like a hat, and I wasn’t used to wearing a furry hat that breathed heavily while I slept.

Eventually I managed to convince Paco that lying next to me might not be too bad, and he crept under the blanket to rest by my leg.

Another hour passed. I still hadn’t fallen asleep, and Paco was breathing so heavily under the blanket that I was worried he was going to dehydrate. Then he lay so still that I had to stick my hand in front of his face to make sure he hadn’t accidentally died in bed next to me.

But now I had other concerns. My right leg had started aching so terribly that I was convinced I had a blood clot. (I blame that episode of House.) The pain in my leg was so bad that I got out of bed, careful not to disturb Paco, and went into the guest room where my books were shelved. I took down the Merck Manual and looked up deep vein thrombosis.

I was alarmed to read that half of the people with DVT showed no symptoms at all. “Chest pain caused by pulmonary embolism may be the first indication that something is wrong,” I read, with growing concern.

Great, now I had to write, “If I am dead when you wake up, it was a blood clot in the right leg” onto a piece of paper and pin it to my pajamas for Chris to find.

For the lucky few who had symptoms, swelling of the calf appeared to be the main one. I craned my neck and peered at the back of my leg. My calf looked a little bit fatter than I remembered. I turned my head in the other direction and checked out my normal calf. Hmm. Maybe my calves had just gained weight, because this one looked as fat as the other one.

I re-read the symptoms section on DVT, hoping I had missed something. I hadn’t, so I reluctantly put down my Merck Manual and went back to bed. Paco was on my pillow again, but when I tried to move my head so that I would get some pillow, he crawled to Chris.

“Chris, he’s breathing kind of heavily,” I said. “Can you put him down? Maybe he needs some water.”

Chris picked up Paco and put him on the floor. Paco scuttled around us, trying to climb back into bed.

Chris jumped out of bed and turned on the light.

“Come here, Paco,” he called. He dipped his finger in the water bowl on the floor and tried to encourage Paco to take a sip. Paco wasn’t interested.

“Maybe we should just put him in his bed on the floor,” I suggested. It was nearly 4 AM, and I still hadn’t slept.

Chris wiggled the brown bed, which was shaped like a cube with a round hole at one end. “C’mon, Paco, get in bed.”

Paco eyed Chris’s hand suspiciously, but climbed in slowly, looking like a giant poop moving in reverse.

Once inside, he rotated position so that his little head protruded from the hole. He stared at us, unblinking.

“Maybe,” I said slowly, “we should just put him to bed in his room.”

“Okay,” Chris said. He picked up the bed.

I got a drink of water and then turned around to see Chris, both hands full with the brown bed, waiting patiently by the closed bedroom door.

“Ooops! Sorry!” I hurried to open the door.

I raced ahead of Chris and opened the door to the dog room. Chris deposited the Paco-filled cube on the floor, and we went back to bed.

After I got home from work the next day, Paco greeted me at the door, wagging his tail. He was still having some trouble walking, but he seemed better. He was interested in food again, and seemed more cheerful than the previous day. Apparently all he had needed was a few hours away from us to recuperate.

Posted by: ssjane | October 12, 2005 | 4:40 pm
Posted in: Dogs