If you love your pet...

We took little Burt, our new puppy to the vet today. All is well with him. That was a good thing. A very good thing.

The downside of today: we received Thor's remains. That little urn was so final.

We didn't have to lose Thor. That's what this post is about. Had we known more. Had we not been so overwhelmed with things during the whole process, we would have remembered more symptoms.

Let me back up a few years ago. Thor had congestive heart disease. For the most part with proper medication and care congestive heart failure can be controlled for many years. And it was with Thor.

Dachshunds are known for being little gluttons. Most of them love their food. So when Thor wanted more and more food, we thought he was being a glutton. Even when we restricted his food and cut back on his food and he still wouldn't lose weight we attributed it to age and him being somewhat lazy. Okay, pretty lazy.

Nothing we did would get the weight off, but it's not unusual for that breed to weigh more than they should.

Then he started retaining more water. We increased his medications for the congestive heart failure. It worked, but only for a few days.

Then he started drinking excessive amounts of water, retaining even more fluid.

I made a comment to a group of my email buddies. One of them asked if we'd had Thor checked for Cushings Disease. No, we hadn't. We hadn't had much more than the basic exams done.

Roger called the vet, I was gone at the time working, and asked him about Cushings. Our vet said he had decided it would be wise to draw some blood the next time he came in. He took him in that very day. They ran a chemistry panel that checked his kidney function and liver function, plus a few other things found in the chemistry panel. When Roger scanned and emailed the results to me, I knew we were in serious trouble.

My job is running those same tests on humans. I'm a clinical laboratory scientist. I saw those results and my heart broke.

The next step was to start him on medications for Cushings. The first attempt was not a success. Thor had no appetite and he couldn't keep anything in him. In the world of veterinary medicine their theory is: if they don't eat, don't treat. We did treat though. We treated trying to get his appetite back. This was under the care of our vet.

When my assignment finally ended and I was able to come home, Thor was eating, but not very much. Nothing like he used to eat. Ever. He had the bottomless pit. But he was eating a tiny bit. We were hopeful.

The day after I arrived home, he stopped eating and drinking. He was listless. We took him to the vet. We expected that it was all over. Because after his adverse reaction to the medications for Cushings even though he was swollen with so much fluid, we could see his muscles had wasted away. His muscle mass was less than half of what it used to be before the first round of medications.

Our vet, bless him, still had hope. We left him so he could give him fluids in an attempt to bring the excessive calcium levels down. The next day Thor had a tough time breathing, so they took an x-ray. He was full of fluids. They drained some of the fluids off. We went to see him on Saturday. We brought him his favorite snuggle blanket (actually my robe) and his favorite toy. With all the fluid gone, our Thor looked great. Both Roger and I had more hope for him than we'd had in a long, long time.

We left that Saturday knowing we'd get to bring him home on the following Monday.

Early the next morning, we received the phone call. Thor died during the night. He'd had an heart attack.

If we'd found the Cushings Disease earlier, we could have saved him.

Typically, especially if Cushings is caused by a slow growing tumor in the parathyroid, it's a slow acting disease. It can cause congestive heart failure among a list of other problems.

The excess steroids in the system cause an increase in appetite, which explains why we were always battling Thor's waistline, or lack of a waistline. It's not a painful disease because the little guy was overdosing on steroids. Which is why it's hard to think your pet may have a serious condition when he doesn't appear to hurt and has a healthy appetite.

I suspect Thor had Cushings long before he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. We controlled that condition for over three years.

But after reviewing everything, I believe Cushings was the cause of the CHF and not in addition to it.

It's very easy to overlook this disease because so many of the symptoms can be attributed to an aging dog.

So, please, if you love your pet, when they start slowing down and getting what we consider aging dog symptoms, ask your vet to include some routine lab tests in their yearly exam. You want to get a baseline of their kidney and liver function. Then have those tests run at least yearly and more often if there's any new signs or symptoms that are extreme for your pet.

In our case, when Thor was acting hungry even immediately after eating, we should have asked for lab tests. Had we done so this last summer when his appetite was even extreme for him, we would have had a diagnosis in time to correct the problem when he was strong enough to endure the treatments available.

We do not blame ourselves, nor our vet for any of this. All of us did everything we could to save Thor.

Within two days of losing Thor, we took Ernie (Thor's sister from a different litter) in for teeth cleaning and to have baseline labs drawn for her. Those tests will be part of her yearly examine.

Roger and I believe we have one of the best vets around. Unfortunately, he hasn't been their vet forever. He's only been their vet since we returned to Kansas in 2008. If you don't let your vet know that you're willing to pay for the extras they won't do them. There are just as many pet owners who aren't willing to pay the price of those extra tests as there are owners who are only too happy to have that assurance they can catch things much earlier.

The biggest mistake we made in all this was to not let our vet know that we fell in the category of owners who are willing to have those extra tests done.

Please don't make the same mistake that we made. Let your vet know if you're willing to pay the extra for routine lab work and/or x-rays for your fur baby.

Please learn from our mistake so you can keep your baby for the natural length of his/her life.