Animal Rescue: Rosie's story

Darren, one of the readers of this blog, and an excellent writer, posted the following statement in his blog:

Spoiling your pet is like creating an umbrella of compassion in a harsh and random world.

Better words could not be said. I'm not sure if Darren rescued his pets, but I believe he did. Even if he didn't, spoiling pets is a wonderful thing, made even more wonderful for rescues. I've had 3 beagles in my adult life, and they have all been spoiled rotten. Mostly because they had a hard life, and deserve it. I will be posting their stories one at a time. I was originally going to put them all together but this post came out longer than I had expected.



Rosie: Rosie was my second beagle, and the first of my adult life. My wife and I had been thinking about getting a dog, after I took her to the Beagle Rescue Education and Welfare(BREW) Beaglefest, back in 2003. She had been reticent about getting a beagle, in fear that they would be too much trouble. But after a few months of looking at Rosie's bio up on the BREW site, we decided that we would give her a happy home. Rosie was a very special girl, and had had a terribly hard life. When we got her, she was 9 or 10, and we knew that she wasn't going to be around for another decade, but we wanted to give her a retirement that she could enjoy. She had been on the adoption site for 6 months, and no one was giving her a chance because she had medical conditions that cost upwards of $200/month to treat. My wife is an incredibly compassionate person, and said "This is the dog for us." She was quiet, she was a couch potato, she wanted to be an only dog, and she loved people. Perfect. We went through the adoption process, and became the new forever home for Rosie Buttons. We added the Buttons, because it fit, and because we didn't want to change her given name from the adoption.

Rosie was pretty healthy, overall, when we got her, except she needed to pee every couple of hours, and was thirsty all the time. Later, we discovered this was Cushing's Disease, but at the time, there was some controversy about what it was, and we kept her on the medicine she had been on in foster care. She was an aloof dog, but LOVED her people. She wouldn't sit in your lap, but she would sit by your side, and was distraught whenever we would go out for long periods of time.

The life that Rosie had before getting into the adoption group was a horrible one, by any standards. She was kept in the bathroom most of the day, and her owners didn't understand her need to go out a lot, so when she had accidents, they would beat her. To her dying day, she was afraid of anything like a broom, or a chair, or anything with a stick-like protrusion. It broke my heart whenever I would mop the floor and she'd go running for the bedroom with her tail between her legs. Still does, just thinking about it. But even with the bad life, and illness, and old age, she was a very good dog, who loved exploring on walks, trying to find road snacks and obsessing over a year-old dead squirrel embedded in a chain link fence in our neighborhood. When it snowed, she would run around with her mouth open, and to the ground, gobbling up as much snow as she could before we made her go inside, shivering like a leaf. She was loved by everyone, especially the pug/Jack Russel next door, Zeus.

Rosie got sick in 2005, and we weren't sure why. She got very frail, very quickly, and it wasn't until we had taken her several times to Angell Memorial Hospital before we discovered that she definitely had Cushings Disease, and that it would take quite a bit to even get it into remission. What Cushing's disease does is to make the adrenal gland go haywire, making it produce adrenaline nonstop. This makes the kidneys kick in more, and all the organs in the body work harder. Its like running in terror ALL THE TIME. Rosie panted a lot, was hot in the middle of the winter, and was starting to look run down. Meanwhile, we had a wedding to plan and take part in, and Rosie was getting worse.

We made the decision to take Rosie with us on our honeymoon, to a local B&B, Restful Paws, out in Brookfield, MA. Its more than a dog-friendly B&B, its a dog-welcoming one that caters to dogs and people who love and pamper their dogs. After several weeks of a very hectic, lonely life, when we had very little time for her, Rosie deserved to take it easy with us. She loved it at Restful Paws. She was pampered, she was able to stay with people all day, and she got the best treats and treatment she had had in a long time. It was a good thing we did that too, because shortly after that, she started to go downhill quickly.

In November 2005, Rosie got precipitously worse. We had been treating her Cushings, and things hadn't improved much, but we hadn't expected them to. One morning, however, she couldn't raise her head above horizontal. This concerned us, so we took her in to Angell, and had some tests done. As it turns out, the Cushings was masking another problem, a slipped disc in her neck. The adrenaline was covering up the pain and trauma, and getting her help in one respect ended up adding to her pain. So, we cut back on her medicine for the Cushings for that reason, and because we realized that she did not have long left. We hoped a few months, but it ended up only being a few weeks. After more of a quick decline, and a daily signs of less energy, we took her in again, and found out that she had a tumor not only on her adrenal gland, but on her kidney as well. Neither were operable. We took her home, in shock, knowing that she had very little time left, but after a night of Rosie looking paniced, panting and laying on her side, in obvious pain, we took her back the next morning to be put to sleep. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It was December 4th, 2005. It snowed that day, which was one of Rosie's favorite things in the world. We thought it was a fitting sign.