Teresa's Life and Quilt Journey: RIP Dusty

Sunday, January 5, 2014

RIP Dusty

On December 26, 2013, we took our two fur babies to the vet to have their ears checked and since Dusty had been acting sick for several days to see what was going on with her. Especially the fact that she had stopped eating cheese and drinking a lot of water. You may recall me telling you about them being diagnosed with Hepatozoonosis at the beginning of 2013. If you go to the website or Google the term, you will learn that it is a serious parasitic disease. Both of our fur babies have it, but Dusty just never seemed to get over it. We made the mistake not taking her in to have more blood work done. She had her days where she acted like she did not feel well, but we figured it was like any other dog. Over Christmas, she started acting sick, stopped eating, and drinking a lot of water. We thought she was running a fever. When I told the vet about her water drinking, he became very serious and said that drinking a lot of water usually indicates a serious problem. On the 27th, he sedated Dusty to draw her blood. Since the dogs were staying for a little bit anyway, we decided to go visit our daughter and her family for a few days. The vet called us while we were on our trip to let us know that she was in liver failure and had been for some time. All her blood work was out of whack and her white blood count was high. So we had to make a difficult decision when he said he felt that she would not recover since her liver had been failing for quite some time.

We went on Jan. 3rd to pick up Blaze, he has been so lost and looks for Dusty everywhere. He has stayed in the house even at night because it was cold, and he is sticking to us like glue. The weather is going to be really bad/cold starting this evening, so he will be in the house most of the time. I've been sleeping in the living room with him the past two nights, but I'm going to try to sleep in our bed tonight and leave him in here. Say a prayer he does fine and doesn't have an accident. He is missing Dusty so bad. Our heart is broken, so I can imagine he is very confused at why we brought him home, but not Dusty. I pray he gets back to himself soon and realizes his buddy isn't coming.

Quilting wise I'm still working on our children's quilts for their beds. I plan to try and sew some today. I've been lazy recovering from our trip and from losing Dusty the past two days. I've also been doing laundry getting ready for the cold weather. Here is a preview of a block or two.