Cow-Dogs and Tough Decisions

Hi everyone.

This post is going to be a bit more melancholy than I normally would write... but this week has been a tough one for the Buckaroo and I and it's only Wednesday. On Monday, he called me in the middle of the day, which never happens, so I knew something was wrong. I almost didn't answer the phone, but when I picked up he said, "Want to hear some news?" and I said, "Sure...." Then he proceeds to tell me that our sweet border collie/kelpie pup Jess had been hit by a car. The person who hit her didn't stop, so there wasn't anyway to get information from them. Which is a whole other situation that really fires me up, but I won't get into that today. She didn't die, but she was badly hurt. Taylor thought she had broken her back but wasn't sure and was going to take her to the vet. So I dropped what I was doing at work and met him there. As soon as I walked back into the exam room and saw her I just started to cry. She was sitting there whining and whimpering, Taylor had blood on his sleeve and the vet was looking her over. The vet said that everything seemed to be fine internally, besides whatever was broken, and that he wanted to do blood work, an ultrasound and an x-ray to be sure. The blood work came back normal. They did the ultrasound to make sure her bladder was still intact and it was. Then the x-ray... as soon as the picture came up on the screen I knew it was bad. The right side of her pelvis was broken pretty badly.

The vet asked us how much we were willing to spend on her and I wanted to say "Whatever it takes!" But I didn't because I knew we wouldn't be able to cover surgery. He told us that a pelvic surgery like this one would be upwards of $6,000... we asked what our other options were and he told us that with her being young and dogs being resilient, that if we put her on a high calcium diet and kept her down as long as we could, that the fracture would heal on it's own. Her chances of being a working cow-dog were pretty slim to none, but she would be able to get around still. Or, we could "cut our losses" and put her down. I kind of grimaced when he said "cut our losses" like she doesn't mean anything to us... I know he didn't mean it that way, but it upset me even more than I was to begin with. He told Taylor and I he would let us take a minute to discuss it. He looks at me and says, "What do you want to do?" and I of course began to cry more and said, "I can't lose another dog!" And he felt the same way. So for now, we have Jess home on pain killers and resting. We aren't sure if she will stay this way, considering that this is causing her a great deal of pain and she can't stand up on her own right now. We will see how the next couple weeks go, but if we feel like she's in too much pain and it's not going to get better, we will put her down... I hate saying that because she is part of our family and absolutely the last thing we want to do. But we also don't want her to suffer.

Below are a couple pictures of our sweet girl. The first one is when she was about 4 months. The last one is the most recent at 7 months old.

If you're curious as to why I said, "I don't want to lose another dog!" in the exam room with Jess is because Taylor and I had a full sister to Jess named Sadie. She was a gorgeous red border collie/kelpie with green eyes. She had such a fun personality and I was really excited for our marriage to begin with us and our cute cow-dog-in-training. But the day after we got married, June 19, 2016, we got a call from my brother-in-law telling us that Sadie had been hit and had passed away... as you can imagine it made for a sad honeymoon. We were just glad that his family took care of her for us and let us know. Because I wouldn't have handled it well coming home to find out she had passed away.

Jess wears the same collar we had Sadie in. Jess has about grown out of it now, but it was good for us to keep that for her. We are going to keep praying and doing whatever we can to make our Jess-girl as comfortable as possible while she heals. And if we don't think that she's getting any better and her pain level is too high, then we will take the steps necessary so she isn't in pain.

Here are some pictures of Sadie.

If you've stuck through this post and are still reading, thank you. Animals become near and dear to me very quickly, so this is a really hard subject for me. Especially since being immersed in the buckaroo lifestyle, I've realized how important every animal becomes when they are on the ranch. And cow-dogs are right there at the top of most important. They help gather cows and make the buckaroo's life a whole lot easier. Jess was beginning to show great potential and the Buckaroo was excited about her.

It also helps me to write out my feelings about it all so I can better cope with it. If anyone has been through something like this with a dog and have insight, I would love to hear it.

With Love,

Abbie

The Buckaroo's Wife