This article changed while I was writing it. It’s not a happy story so far, so you’ve been warned.
This is Jake, my new yellow Labrador puppy. He was born October 4 and I took him home on November 29. He IS unbearably cute, isn’t he?
Here we are, a few days after I brought him home:
Why Get a Puppy?
The Rescue Nazis out there will screech at you to “adopt, don’t shop.” They instruct you to rescue a dog from a shelter or one of the many breed-specific organizations, and not buy one from a breeder. After all, they say, there are so many neglected animals just waiting for a kind person to give them a “forever home” that there’s no excuse for encouraging “backyard breeders” and “puppy mills.”
This is pure propaganda (or, to use a less polite word: “BS”) that I’m quite happy to ignore. Jake is from a reputable breeder who’s been doing it for over a decade. She isn’t running a puppy mill.
The Happy Dog
My previous dog, Ernie,
also a Labrador and also raised by me, regularly caused random people on the street to pronounce him “happy.” I kept a count, actually, of people who
Had never seen him before, and
With no prompting from me, used the word “happy.”
In Ernie’s 9 1/2 years, there were 169 of those. I don’t know what, exactly, a person is responding to when they call a dog “happy” but 169 people saw something.
Is the point that I’m a great dog owner? (Well, maybe). No, it’s that Ernie had never known anything but love and kindness (and he was from a breed known for being friendly). I wasn’t after an obedient dog or a well-trained dog, although when we met another dog on the street, that dog’s owner often remarked on how calm he was. Ernie had only one job, and that was to be happy and to make me happy.
I’ll have another post on what happened to Ernie. That story’s not so happy.
How a Dog Becomes a “Rescue”
In Fantasy World, all those dogs in the shelter are perfectly wonderful animals, just waiting to go home with you and be your lifelong loving companion. Indeed you can read infinitely many anecdotes of exactly that. But that’s all they are: anecdotes. The plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”
Ask yourself: how did those dogs get there? What was their puppyhood like? Do you really believe it was like Ernie’s? Why were they turned in to the shelter, or worse, captured by Animal Control as strays? What was the effect of all that on their emotional development?
You don’t know. You can’t know. But there’s a strong possibility that they did not have a good upbringing, or they showed such behavioral problems that the owners didn’t want them anymore. Most likely, those owners “rescued” the dog themselves, and then found that they didn’t like having a dog.
The fact that the adoption price is so much less than a pedigreed puppy might have made it seem like less of a commitment. We know that after the pandemic ended, a lot of dogs got returned to shelters. I think those owners ought to be locked up in cages themselves.
Maybe not. Maybe the first owners were wonderful people whose circumstances just changed and they couldn’t keep the dog anymore. Maybe you’ll be lucky. Or maybe the dog’s emotional problems can be fixed. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can’t.
Confounding the Vets
9 days ago, Jake started vomiting. On Saturday morning, Jan. 18 I took him to Veterinary Emergency Group in north San Jose. They did X-rays and blood work, and didn’t find anything untoward. They suspected a blockage, or maybe he ate something toxic, and referred me to MedVet Campbell, because they have an ultrasound tech. They were very negative on the idea of me taking him home.
Late in the afternoon I drove him to Campbell, and they examined him further, keeping him for the night. The ultrasound found no blockages, and at first they thought he’d eaten something bad. That theory didn’t pan out, and then they thought it must be leukemia (yes, I know little puppies don’t usually get that). They don’t have an oncologist, so they referred me again to MedVet Silicon Valley in south San Jose.
That doctor did more testing and diagnosed him with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Jake got one round of L-asparaginase (“elsparg” in the jargon), as well as prednisone and other followup drugs. Besides giving him the tentative diagnosis, they also shipped off some cells to the lab at Colorado State University, for flow cytometry, which is the definitive diagnosis for things like this. That takes 3-4 days.
He was still in a lot of pain, and I took him back to MedVet yesterday morning, 1/25. They said all his vitals were pretty good, and gave him some pain meds, which don’t appear to be working, from what I can tell. Or maybe his bones are just hurting from the leukemia & chemo.
Surprise, surprise: yesterday, the oncologist said in an email:
I got the flow cytometry back. It is quite unique. It is a B-cell leukemia that is extremely rare, and there is almost no data on it. It expresses very unique surface marker (CD22) and does NOT express the typical B cell marker (CD21). So, it is a CD21 negative/CD22+ leukemia. It does not express the precursor CD34 (acute leukemia) antigen, which is a surprise. However, the data we do have on this leukemia shows that dogs lived less than 1 month, and anemia, low blood platelets were common, and it happened in dogs less than 2 years of age. High blood calcium was very common as well. The issues is, though, that we do not know if treatment helped them. So, it might be worth trying treatment ONLY IF you are up for it.
I haven’t talked to the oncologist today. Tomorrow he sees his regular vet, so we’ll see what she thinks. I actually think that one should ignore the medical/scientific conundrum (fascinating though it must be for a professional), and just focus on what the poor little animal is going through.
This isn’t like the more common case of an older dog with cancer. Jake is a little baby who ought to have a full life ahead of him. So euthanasia isn’t an easy choice. It might be the humane choice; we’ll see.
Support for You
One hears about people who are full-time caregivers for elderly or very sick people, and how they need support and a break once in a while. No one can do this 24x7.
I will have more to say about this later. I do have support even though I live alone. I’m getting exercise and eating regular meals.
A Note on Pet Insurance
Fortunately, I did get pet insurance from Trupanion, the gold standard as far as I can tell. They have been absolutely fantastic so far. All my claims have been approved by the next day. There are other pet insurance companies but I don’t have any opinions on those.
An emergency vet visit is shockingly expensive. Get pet insurance, and have plenty of ready cash in the bank if you have a pet. The emergency vets I went to don’t bill your insurance directly, but it might be different with the one you go to.
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