And as most pet owners know, these unexpected expenses never occur when it's convenient. Here we are on New Year's Eve, and where is our dog?
Hospitalized at the emergency vet, of course.
She'd been coughing since the Thursday before Christmas. On Tuesday we took her in to our regular vet, and they diagnosed her with pneumonia. They prescribed antibiotics, and for a couple of days she seemed to be getting better, but today she wouldn't eat and hardly drank any water. So, in to the emergency care vet we went.
Luckily for Emma (who is the brown dog in the picture above), she should be okay after a night of IV fluids and a couple of different antibiotics. (The vet took her off the stuff that had caused her to stop eating.) But our visit to the fur-people's emergency room reminded me of another visit with equally bad timing: the night before Tax Day, 2009, when we took my cat Prince in (he's the white cat shown in the picture).
Prince hadn't been eating on his own for about 6 months -- our regular vet hadn't been able to find anything wrong with him, so I had just been force feeding him 4 or 5 times every day. Not the most fun thing in the world, but it had kept my beloved cat alive, so I was willing. Unfortunately, he aspirated some food toward the end, and developed pneumonia -- and when they were running tests to try to determine how bad it was, they discovered he had massive tumors behind his heart (which was obviously the reason why he'd stopped eating). The ultrasound my vet had done had completely missed them, either because they were smaller then, or because they didn't look high enough. The emergency vet even had a hard time finding them because of their location.
Being at the emergency vet again made me remember Prince's visit to the emergency vet, which ended in euthanization because it turned out he was so ill. Luckily Emma has a much different prognosis, but it's been somewhat difficult having to face the sad memories. Pets are such wonderful companions -- it's hard to give them up, and an especially beloved pet can always resurface in your thoughts at the slightest provocation, even a couple of years later.