The Dog

Our dog Maxie is getting old. She's 14. She has spent a lot of her life living with Mike's parents. We had her for 5 years, but then after our first twins turned 1, we moved into a new house and her bladder problems really escalated when we had kids and she was peeing everywhere in our new house, Mike's parents agreed to take her. After several years they were ready to give her back when we announced we were having another set of twins. No way could we deal with her once again. So they ultimately had her 5 years. So when she was 10 and our kids were 6 and 3, we got her back. But she had already started having problems with her muscle control as her hind legs would shake. Shortly after we got her back she started having seizures. She nearly died but turns out she had a calcium deficiency. So for 4 years now we have been giving her calcium supplements and that has done the trick.

But she continues to decline. Muscle control continues to weaken. She can barely stand on all of our hard floors. Her legs slide out like Bambi and it is sad. Her bladder sucks. Always has. She pees all the time and the older she gets the worse it gets. I clean up so much pee from this dog. But in the last year I've decided she really can no longer help it. And her sight has been deteriorating and I'm certain she's 99% blind now. She bumps into things and walks into corners and just stands there staring into a corner because she doesn't know what to do. Her hearing is bad. But aside from all these things, she's healthy!

Well, Thanksgiving she had been at the inlaws and she got sick from my sister-in-law's dog. Maxie nearly died but my father-in-law took her to the vet and got her on IV's. They released her after 2 or 3 days and the next day she was right back at the vet. They almost had her put down but it felt weird for all of us since she was there and not here. So they put her on an IV one more time overnight (on a Friday) and the next day Mike's dad drove her up here. We thought we were going to put her down on Monday and were just trying to love on her and get to Monday. Sunday night she perked up a bit so we decided not to do it just yet. Then Monday Mike went out of town and the dog was just terrible. She had no life in her at all. Like a limp noodle. We had to force any food, water, or calcium down her. Sometimes it was just impossible. Because she wasn't getting her calcium she kept falling over. I was really just waiting for Mike to get back so we could put her down, and in the meantime I kept trying to help her (because as Reagan reminded me we had to do EVERYTHING we could to help her).

Well lo and behold she started to do a little better after nearly two weeks of really just not even being in there. We started to see her personality and life come back again. We once again decided not to put her down. I honestly can't believe she rebounded when she was so close to dying for 2 weeks straight. It's hard though. She is really hard to take care of in our big house and with 4 kids running around. Our lives our SO busy it's hard to be here enough to help her with her needs (primarily taking her out to the bathroom every hour!).

So Mike just talked to his parents and they are going to take her once again (they will often take her a month at a time if we are going out of town or something). They had her last week and she had no accidents except one when they were at the hospital all day for surgery. So they are taking her because we honestly think it's better for the dog. If she gets sick again, no one will be putting her on IV's. It's sad to not be with her, but her peeing all the time and falling in it and then not being able to walk on our floors just isn't working with her. But what a fighter! Kind of a miracle that she pulled through. Reagan was so happy! She said she couldn't imagine Christmas without her.