Goodbye Nova...

She was a good dog.  

She had some issues, but she was still a faithful, loyal, good dog.

Nova was euthanized Monday morning.

You might think it strange that I'm posting so soon after her death.  I had to get it out, though.

In order for me to explain what led to her euthanization, I must go back, to a week before her pregnancy.




One week before she whelped, she suddenly dropped weight.  Although her belly hung down and was big, her ribs were showing.  Her eyes suddenly bugged out, and the pink membrane of the eye started to completely cover her eyes.  Before we called the vet, we did research online, and a site said that the membrane would cover a dog's eyes because of fetal development in the puppies.  We then called the vet, and they said it was probably an allergic reaction.  We changed dog food brands, and the membrane eye lining went away.

You guys know much of what followed.  Nova whelped January 29.  We went to the kennel, and found three puppies dead and two alive.  We brought her in the house.  One of the live puppies that had been found outside died.  She had two more puppies, one of which died at a week old.  That left two puppies of the original 7 born alive.  A boy and a girl, Kavik and Sapphire.

Nova dried up at 2 weeks, leaving us supplementing the puppies with powdered milk and wet dog food.  

She also would barf up her food, eat the barf, and barf again.  And she wasn't gaining weight.

Suddenly at around 6 weeks, Nova went blind.

We noticed that she started tripping over stuff.  This soon progressed as she completely went blind.  She ran into fences, blundered through sagebrush, ran into the house, and fell of the porch.  Her eyes had a cloudy blue film over them, and she wouldn't blink when I ran my hand in front of her eyes.

It was horrible.

We took her into the vet on the morning of Monday the 16, this week.

While we were there with her at the clinic, they weighed her in at 56 pounds.  She had previously been 81 pounds.  They drew her blood, and ran an ultrasound.  They saw a mysterious substance in the uterus, which they assumed could either be pus, placenta, or even a dead puppy.

We left, and were told that they would call back 30 minutes later to see what they found.  We went home, and left her at the clinic.  Almost an hour passed before they called.

Nova had diabetes.

They said that because she was so old when she got pregnant (she was 5 years old) for some reason it triggered the diabetes, and created cataracts over her eyes.  The stuff in the uterus was pus, which the vet said was common in animals and people with diabetes.

It would have taken two insulin shots a day, for the rest of her life, to keep her alive.  The insulin would have been $100 a month.  And she would have been permanently blind.

Permanently blind? That would have been no life for her.

And so we euthanized her, the only humane thing to do.

We concluded that the three puppies we found dead outside were born dead.  They might have had something internally wrong, which would have explained the membrane on the eye that was caused by fetal development.  This membrane that covered her eyes for a week and the diabetes worked together to make her blind.

It hurts.  I miss her.  She was a good dog, and I loved her.  This was the first time that we have ever lost and animal that we really loved.

It will be a long time before it stops hurting, and the ache completely goes away.

We got her body and buried her in the back pasture, between two pine trees, next to the little trail that she used to run down.

Goodbye Nova...