It’s been 17 days since our sweet baby earned her silver harness and journeyed across the Rainbow Bridge.  Those 17 days have been unimaginably difficult, and probably the worst days of my life.  We are doing better, the pain and shock have finally numbed a little, but I still have that little feeling in the back of my mind that this didn’t really happen.

We spent the last 14 months steeling ourselves for “the seizure”, the one that she wouldn’t recover from.  It was pretty inevitable given the severity of her hydrocephalus and the amount of missing brain tissue.  We were caught completely off guard by the blockage that wound up taking her from us.  Shadow had big Pica issues because of all of the neuro issues.  That dog would eat anything that wasn’t nailed down, and knowing this we did what we could to keep her safe and keep her from eating non food items.  It wasn’t enough, and I still feel crippling guilt that I didn’t take that toy away.  She, unbeknownst to us, had eaten a couple of inches of nylon rope out of a toy we’d been given.  She threw up early in the week and in the dark I could see chunks of something in it, but it was in the middle of the night and my still sleeping brain didn’t register the danger.  I thought she’d been eating poo in the back yard again.  It wasn’t until Saturday morning that we figured out she was sick.  It still never crossed my mind that she could have a blockage.  By Sunday afternoon, it was obvious that something was seriously wrong, and our saint of a vet got one of her techs to come meet us hoping we could stave off a trip to the ER.  It was painfully clear to everyone as soon as we saw the X-Rays that she had a blockage, so off to the ER we went for surgery.

When we got there, we found that none of the boarded surgeons were available to operate and we could have the resident do it or wait until morning.  We opted to have it done that night by the resident, fearing that any wait could result in necrotic bowel.  This is one of the things that I keep going back to.  Did he screw something up?  Did we make the wrong decision?  If we’d waited, would we be sitting here tonight laughing about how Shadow the Shitter finally met her match but recovered?  I just can’t stop thinking about all the things I could have done differently that could have affected the outcome.  Why didn’t I emphasize more to them that something was really wrong when I took her back on Wednesday morning?  Why didn’t I demand more aggressive treatment?  I can’t help but feel like I could have done more and that in the end I failed her.  I got a call on Thursday afternoon a couple hours after I’d called to check on her.  I felt like I got punched in the stomach as the doctor explained that Shadow had in fact developed a leak at the repair site in her intestine, and that she had gone septic.  I literally felt the blood drain out of my face as she said that Shadow would, without a doubt, die unless they took her back right away in a last ditch effort to fix the leak and clean out the infection.  When Aaron and I got there to see her, at first she perked up and gave us kisses, but then deteriorated before our eyes.  It was obvious at that point that another surgery was futile and that it would only serve to further torture our little girl.  We made the most difficult, painful decision to let her go peacefully.

We thought it would be a seizure that took her, something that we couldn’t control.  But no, it was something that was so fucking preventable, and I feel horrible about it.

We were sitting later that evening in a total daze barely even registering what was on TV, when I heard Richard Webber on Grey’s Anatomy say “I think when the world gives you more than you bargained for, you usually end up glad you got it”.  Shadow wound up being way more than we bargained for, in so many ways.  That dog left an impression on every single person she ever came across.  She had this magical quality about her that made it impossible to not fall instantly in love.  I don’t think there has been a sweeter dog that ever walked the earth.  She also required an amazing amount of care.  I got up every day at 0545 (if she didn’t get me up during the night to go poop) to get her the 1st of her 8 rounds of medications.  This was every day.  I didn’t sleep in.  Ever.  I only got uninterrupted sleep if I had to go out of town, and even then I worried that something would happen while I was gone.  She was hugely expensive, too.  We are very fortunate that we both have good jobs, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to afford the medications, appointments, and daycare that she required.  She wound up being FAR more than we bargained for when we first saw that little fuzzy puppy with the angry mask on the rescue webpage, and we wouldn’t have had it any other way.  I would happily take it all on again just to have her back.  I would give anything for one more time getting tackled and kissed half to death, one more time going to sleep with her snuggled up against me, one more time getting her to talk to us in her goofy little way.

We’ve begun fostering other dogs in need.  We didn’t intend to do so as soon as we did, but a very sweet little girl desperately needed a foster for a couple of weeks, and it would have been selfish of us not to step up and open our home.  She came into our lives when we needed her, and helped all of us (including Ghost) heal.  She’s since gone to her forever home, but we plan on honoring Shadow’s legacy and helping as many homeless Huskies as we can.  Who knows, we’ll probably foster fail but we’ll always continue to do everything we can to support rescue efforts nationwide.