logloglog

Watch him get special food. It’s not fair.

You really have to entice Pepe to start eating the special low protein food he gets to prevent his kidneys to deteriorate . Mix the food with peanut butter and water. Heat it up in the microwave. Dip your finger in it, put it in front of him. He looks elsewhere. Try again. Wipe some food on his lips so he licks it off. Sometimes he start eating then, sometimes he doesn’t. If not, try harder. Often we present two kinds of food so he has another choice and can decide that food A is worse than food B so he’ll eat some of food A, gets into it and then also tries food B.
If after that he still doesn’t want to eat we put the food away so Poupoune doesn’t eat it and try again in a few hours.

All in all he’s doing quite well on the new regime. He gained some weight and in general seems to be happy and in good health.

Everything is brown and grey now the snow has melted and the trees and shrub are still leafless. Everything except Alison!

The snow is covered with a crusty layer because it’s thawing and Poupoune has found out she can now use the mountain of snow as a secret passage to the neighbour’s garden, and subsequently, to the cats in the alley.

Note to self: make the fence two metres taller.

Poupoune is surprised to find the 1 metre high bins in the park reduced to ‘holes in the ground’ she only knows from her visits to the hair dresser.

[Made with the new camera, but I'm not blown away by the 'snow' preset. O wait, I had another setting wrong. Too many options...]

Pepe often covers his bowl of food so he can eat it later when he doesn’t feel nauseated. He does this by using his nose to move sand over his food. Since we are in short supply of sand in our kitchen, the dishtowel that we put his bowl on has to do. And it does.

Now he only needs to find a solution to that pesky creature called Poupoune, who keeps eating his food the moment Pepe leaves the kitchen. Even when he covered it.

What a difference a day or two makes. Yesterday I brought Pepe to the vet, who was very concerned and wanted me to take him to the animal hospital (the same place where I spent 1500 dollar for Poupoune a couple of years ago) to stay on an IV for the weekend to get some fluids and nutrients into him. She feared he had an ulcer and wanted to do lots of tests to come to a diagnose. I decided to only treat his symptoms, so she gave him an antacid and some subcutaneous saline. After paying 100 bucks I went home, with him wrapped in a blanket under my coat in the softly falling snow.

He slept all day, but then ate a little bit, and didn’t vomit. By the time Alison came home from the airport after midnight he was already feeling much better. He greeted her with his signature dance and she was very happy to see him alive. Today he’s even feeling better and eats and drinks, although not in very big quantities. But he is still frail. He lost almost a pound in body weight mostly of a lack of fluids. That is not healthy and we really have to fatten him up over the next weeks. He is very low on reserves.

I suspect him from pulling these stunts just to make us bond stronger to him. That and to be on the front-page of loglog every day.

I still need to record his dance for posterity; fortunately it seems he gave me a chance to do it. Now I only have to make him dance on camera. So far when I point the camera at him he immediately stops dancing and just stares at me and barks. His bark is just loud and annoying and not nearly as cute as him dancing in circles.

I might have been way too optimistic about Pepe’s longevity. He has hardly eaten during the last few days, and when he eats he starts to vomit soon thereafter. He sleeps all day, and when not he’s very frail and trembles a lot. He still wags his tail though, so there is some liveness in him, but he’s definitely not feeling well.

I just found a big puddle of watery vomit with blood in it.

Not good. Tomorrow to the vet, I hope she can keep him alive until the weekend when Alison comes back from a business-trip out West.

Pepe is ill. His kidneys don’t work very well, he’s drinking and peeing a lot, and he slowly loses weight. Getting the diagnose of kidney failure took a while because the vet wanted to check his blood and urine a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t a temporary illness that could be cured with some anti-biotic. She prescribed him antibiotics for a month ówhich made him feel nauseated causing even more weight lossó but it didn’t help.

So he is going to die. Not in a couple of months, but probably in a year of two. There is no cure but we can stretch his life a little, and improve his quality of life by giving him magical kidney powder. In order to make sure the medication is not having bad side-effects he also needs blood-tests every 3 months.

All this is not going to break the bank (it’ll cost slightly more than dollar a day) but during the last few months we thought long and hard what our limits are. Not only financial, but also moral. Should one really spend thousands of dollars to prolong the life of a dog (who had a good 12 years on earth) while for the same amount of money you could keep some people alive? It starts with a few dollars but since you have started, when and where do you stop? We’ve decided to treat him until the treatment stops working or until he has pain and isn’t happy anymore. But no big interventions.

Just thinking about our boundaries makes us feel guilty. Who are we to decide about life and death? But in reality we do. Our pets won’t survive without us. They need us for food and shelter and in return they keep us company and give us affection. But all these questions and doubts come up with Pepe, a dog we don’t have such a tight bond with compared to Poupoune. If Poupoune was ill we probably would go much further in extending her life.

Sure, Pepe is always good humoured, dances adorably (although not on camera) when he is excited and is very snugly and likes to be under your sweater and peep out his head like a joey. He sleeps 20 hours a day, preferably under a blanket, can’t go out for walks in the winter, sometimes poops and pees in places he’s not supposed to and, above all, he is not very bright.

Even though he’s ill he still does all of that. He’s not suffering as far as we can tell, and we give him special canned dog food specially formulated for dogs with kidney failure. Unfortunately Poupoune is very jealous he’s getting special treatment and she’s even grumpier than before.

There were two of them. Two very big moose, right there in our backyard!

Slowly, silently, they stepped over the low fence into the garden. They were huge. Pepe started yapping at them. One moose stepped forward and crushed Pepe under its gigantic foot. It then bowed down and started with ripping Pepe’s hind leg from his body. It was a rather bloody affair, and Pepe, still conscious, cried as he used to do when Alison cut his nails, but then louder.
From the porch I watched the things unfold in absolute shock and horror but at the same time I couldn’t stop looking. I just stood there, frozen. Didn’t, couldn’t interfere and totally forgot to take pictures. Strange thoughts went through my mind like “at least he won’t pee on the floors anymore” and “finally I’ll get uninterrupted nights sleep”. Both guilt for my horrible thoughts and relief over Pepe’s sudden demise filled my mind. In the meantime the moose had finished eating the final bits of Pepe, and he and his mate slowly stepped away, back into the lane-way. A bloody patch in the snow was all that was left of the dog.

Poupoune, when asked for comments, thought it was an excellent dream.