Heart Break

For those of you who do not know yet, Roxie has been diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. 

She was coughing and her abdomen got really swollen so we took her to the vet.  We thought the coughing was from eating mulch in the backyard.  It wasn't.  She got the diagnosis on Thursday night and had to go back to the doctor to stay all day Friday while they drained the fluid.  The drained a 1/2 a liter off of her and that's a lot for a little doggie.

Dr. Carder (the vet there) is super great.  She's just out of vet school and took Roxie on as her special project.  Apparently Rox is a marvel of medicine.  She is very sick but doesn't let it slow her down and most dogs at this stage show a lot more symptoms.  They rate the disease A, B, C, and D.  D being the worst and the end stage.  Roxie is in Stage C.  The Vet said we will have to drain her again, but with the new meds that she's on we don't know how long it will be before we have to do that again.  We're praying that it's months in between draining.  She said we can do that as often as we need until the end.

She was optimistic that we've bought another 6 months to a year with her but only time will tell.  She's springing around here snapping at Erin like she's a pup.  I know she has to feel better since she got the fluid off of her and the coughing has almost completely stopped.

For now, she's getting spoiled rotten.  I've noticed that Tommy and I both hand out the treats a lot more freely now!  Now if we can just keep Erin from trying to ride her....