When I decided to foster a French Bulldog who was relinquished a few months shy of his 2nd birthday, I didn’t know how different my life would be. He was relinquished for a new onset of seizures in which he became fear aggressive during his post ictal phase. With 2 younger children in the household, I understand their concern and chose the best decision they could. While I thought I wasn’t ready for a seizure dog, I had no idea this would be the least of his worries AND problems. Fast forward a year, he was scheduled with the amazing surgery team at my hospital for his THIRD airway revision & a Tie-back surgery. He had already had a gastropexy for his sliding hiatal hernia at his 2nd revision due to lack of improvement from his 1st BOAS surgery. Unfortunately, he developed severe gastric ileus and was continuously regurging. This only made his post op upper airway swelling worse. He needed to be anesthetized so we could decompress his stomach as he was non-compliant with placement of an NG tube. Shocker, the frenchie was not compliant (lol). Of course, being an ICU technician and a VTS (ECC), I decided that I would be his anesthetist. While we were working on decompressing his stomach, he was noted to be having a significant vagal response. He was non-atropine responsive. While this was going on, I noticed that he was cyanotic. Shortly after, he went into cardiopulmonary arrest. We initiated CPR based on the RECOVER initiative guidelines. We were successful after 2 rounds of BLS! Long story short, he later failed his extubation trial, wasn’t a fan of TIVA, had a temp trach placed, woke up blind & deaf, and was hospitalized for 8 days. During this time, I was able to support him and his care by using some of his treatment plan as learning and development opportunities for his ICU care team. This care has gone on to help them take care of others with similar treatment plans. He was discharged on the anniversary of my brother’s celebration of life. As a side note, I was certified as a RECOVER BLS/ALS Instructor the year prior. Fast forward, he is now part of my pDVM outreach CE focused on CPR as CPA survivor & attestation that the guidelines and training do work. This boy almost didn’t see his 3rd birthday. Because of the dedication of my amazing co-workers, my love of this little boy, my resiliency to follow through on my promise of giving him the best life and outcome possible, and him getting the memo that he is a Frenchie, we got to celebrate his 6th birthday in March of this year. You would never know all the things he went through and I wouldn’t change a thing! Ok maybe a little less sass but he has changed my life for the better!

Many years ago, before I got my credentials, I worked as a kennel manager/vet assistant at an animal hospital/boarding facility where I had a patient named Rock. He was a big teddy bear of a Rottweiler that stayed at the clinic’s boarding facility every couple of months when his owner had to travel for work. He was hand signaled trained and he knew the location of every single treat jar in the entire hospital. Every time he went outside, Rock insisted on getting a treat after coming back in. One morning, when I took him out for a walk, I noticed that he hadn’t finished his breakfast yet which was odd because Rock lived for food. I brought him back in and asked for a few tricks before tossing him a treat. Rock caught it, but didn’t eat it so I immediately went to the practice owner.
Me: Hey Doc, there’s something wrong with Rock. He didn’t finish his breakfast and he didn’t eat his treat
Doc: huh. Anything else?
Me: No, but you know Rock lives for food. He would never not eat his treat unless there was something wrong with him.
Doc: Well, give his owner a call and see if he’ll ok some diagnostics.

I called the owner and explained my concerns
Owner: well, you know him about as well as I do. If you think there’s something going on then do whatever tests you think are necessary.

We ran blood work, took some rads, and even got our radiologist to come in and do an ultrasound. Long story short, Rock had a massive bleeding mass on his spleen and we got him into surgery an hour later for a splenectomy. Afterwards, Doc told me that he was certain the mass would have likely ruptured overnight and we would have come in in the morning to find that Rock was no longer with us. Thankfully, the mass was benign and Rock lived many more years.

And I will always be grateful for a DVM who listened to the 20-something year old kennel manager/vet assistant who, at the time, knew basically nothing about anything except that an otherwise healthy appearing patient had a very minor behavior change.

In the next few days, I will assist in the euthanasia of a beautiful 3 year old Doberman named Charley. In the past 6 weeks, I have been there for the family when two of their older dogs, Ringo and Paxx, were euthanized due other senior health issues. All of these dogs were working dogs and everything you would ever want to see in this breed. The findings on this one last nite of renal cancer has totally taken me down. I have worked in vet medicine since I was 12 yrs old and will be 69 this month. I can hardly write these words feeling the pain I do for this family, but as a vet nurse, I feel it is one of the most important tasks we do to be with these families as they say good bye to these pets, whatever species they are. Many people do not get the support of others, because it is “just a dog”, they are expected to move on, but as vet professionals, we know, professionally and personally, this is not the case. I thank God for the blessings this profession has given me in my long career and pray for a few more years to support the families it has brought into my life, even in the toughest moments.