Our Little Angel
I wish I could turn back the last week and start again.
Our old lady Gipsie died back in April. We had had her for fourteen years, she was a part of our family – a much loved part of our family, and it has taken a few months before we could even think about a new puppy – but last week we decided the time was right and started looking again.
On Saturday we went to collect our new baby girl – hubby, the two girls and I drove up to Chadstone to collect her. She was a gorgeous little thing – well as little as a two month old German shepherd can be. She stunk to high heaven – Con, the breeder, said she and her sister had been a little car sick on the way down from Kerang – a three hour drive away.
Well, when we got her home we took her out into the back garden for a little while, to relieve herself, and so she could have a wander and stretch her legs. She had been a little sick in the car, but had spent almost the whole drive asleep – so when she got out into the garden she raced all over the place and became a little skittish with C, playing all over the place.
Then she started getting tired, like most little puppies do, and we weren’t surprised when she fell asleep and wasn’t too hungry. During the night she started whinning in the bathroom, so I packed her into a large box and placed her by my side of the bed. I’d just started dozing off when she started throwing up. I cleaned up the frothy white mucus and finally we settled back down again.
Once more, a little while later she started throwing up. This went on through most of the night, little sleep for any of us. She had a bad bout of diarrhoea the next moring and had continued to throw up, so I called the vets and took her off to Dromana to have her checked out.
The vet wasn’t happy with how she looked, nor with the faecal test she did, saying she hadn’t seen so much bacteria in a pupy before. A shot of antibiotics, a shot for the pain and nausea, and then more antibiotics for the following morning, in pill form; as well as an electrolyte formula for her and we were off home again.
She continued throwing up most of the night, and I called the breeder to let him know what was going on, so he could check up on the other pups. The vet had mentioned parvovirus, so I wanted to make sure the other pups didn’t have an infection as well.
Getting to know you...
Monday morning (no sleep again through the night), and I called the vets to say she still wasn’t doing too well. They booked us in for a four o’clock appointment.
At two, I decided to give her another bath because she had been sick and still had diarrhoea – but she all but passed out in the bathtub – so badly lethargic that she was limp like a rag doll. I pulled her out of the bath and covered her with a couple of towels, while hubby rang the vets. We were told to bring her in immediately.
We did. I bundled her into a washing basket, covered in a couple of towels, and she loosed her bowels again all through them by the time we got to the vets. We were shown into a room, and the vet came in to check her – the same vet from the day before.
We were told she would be put on to a drip and that the next 24 hours would be the teller to whether she would recover or not. We left the vets in tears.
We had only been home for about twenty minutes when the phone rang. Allie had just passed away. The parvo tests came through as negative, so all anyone can think is that she had a really bad case of enteritis.
The whole family has been devestated by her death. Eight weeks – such a short life.
I rang the breeder and told him what had happened. He was as upset as we were, and has refunded her purchase price in full.
We have a few photos from when she was out playing in the back garden; and a couple more from later Saturday night when she still seemed alright and was laying on C’s lap – I’d actually gone out to scrapping that night and used one of the better ones with Allie and C for a layout.
I intend on doing another layout, a memorial one for Allie sometime soon. I want to be able to write her a letter – one that Cailee will be able to look back on in years to come when she has started to forget about the little puppy that was a part of our lives for such a short time.
Allie may have only been a part of our family for a short forty-eight hours but we won’t ever forget her and the impact her short life, and death, made upon us.
RIP Allie.
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