Today has been a very difficult one for me personally, but also for the SHAK Team and one of our long term fosterers. Of course that means that dogs have been effected, and in one instance paid the ultimate price.
Dudley was at the vets again for x rays on his back, and as expected it wasnt good news. There is definite arthritis present in his spine, you can see that clearly on the x rays, but also after several tests there appears to be some neurological damage too. Discs don't appear on x rays so an MRI scan costing four figures would be the only way to rule out Disc Disease and even after surgery the damage by the arthritis would mean he could never be fixed. It's the vets belief that my original and worst fears are perhaps the case, and that Dudley is suffering from CDRM, a condition that is rife in German Shepherds. There is no cure, all we can do is give him as much love as we can and be brave when the time comes. The ironic and almost sickening thing is that the X-ray also showed Dudley to have exceptionally good hips, something so many other GSD's don't have. Last night I slept with Dudley on the floor, if it was to be his last night with us (just a fear I had) he was going to be cuddled. Tonight he is still very groggy from such a traumatic day, but he is still getting the cuddles.
It's very sad that today too we lost the first ever Forever Foster dog, Max the German Shepherd. A beautiful sable boy, Max came to us with a weak backend, skin problems and suffering from nose bleeds. Eventually we got him well enough to look for a home, but because of his health nobody wanted him. That's when I came up with the Forever Foster scheme and enabling the dogs with health issues to get into homes by assisting with their vet bills. When Dawn met Max it was love at first sight, and he went on to have 3 years of a fantastic life, that we never thought he'd get. Ironically today his backend became too much for him and he lost the fight. Or did he? The simple fact he's left a family devastated and people like me feeling lucky to of help such a brave boy, means he was the winner in my eyes. Run free Max, you were an inspiration to this charity in ways you can't imagine. Our thoughts are with Dawn and her family.
To make matters worse we were alerted at 7.30am to a dog that was eventually destroyed at 10am this morning because we couldn't find space for another large dog. The sickening experience we have faced today with Dudley and Max makes this loss of life that could of been avoided so much harder to take.
