Pupper and Doggo, an emotional rollercoaster story (pic heavy)

Grab a beverage and sit down, this is a long story, sorry not sorry.

My wife works in the Veterinary ER world, so she happens to see the worst of the worst.  Besides the 2 older dogs we have had for years, we foster on a semi regular basis.  Usually we end up doing it to keep ICU/ER medical expenses from accruing on heavily injured strays & surrenders that can’t go to a normal foster (which means we perform a fair amount of bandage changes and medicine regiments at home), but occasionally we play the role of hospice since an older, terminal patient isn’t a good candidate for home placement.    

This we do because we are animal lovers and feel no animal should die alone, the emotional toll is present, but pales in comparison to the love we receive from these animals who appreciate the care. There have been countless critters over the years, most of which we keep anonymous, but recently a pupper came into our life that has had a hell of a story, and we are the owners, so it’s ours to share.

Back in April, a breeder a few hours away was going to surrender a cattle dog puppy with some issues to a rescue organization we know closely, during the hand off they also gave a 2nd puppers, a tiny runt of a female Boston Terrier that couldn’t walk.  My wife absolutely loves Boston’s, so as soon as I saw the first photo I knew this was going to be a foster fail (meaning we’d keep her).

So I introduce to you, Noodle.  She had almost zero muscle mass, or muscle control, much like a limp cooked noodle.

First I built her a stand to eat in, since she couldn’t hold herself up.   Hell, even drinking water was a drowning risk since she couldn’t hold her head straight and had uncontrollable tremors. But at this point she could almost keep propped up for a few minutes. (this is 3/4" PVC for size reference)

Why don't you walk? Here meeting the old lady (Australian Kelpie), definitely a confusing situation.

Sorry for the Selfie (& marathon beard) but you can see just how tiny she is cradled in my arm.

The breeder said she got a too heavy dose of a heartworm medicine (ivermectin) and that may be why she couldn’t walk, well my wife is an ER Criticalist so triage and poison control are high on her list of specialties, and while this didn’t really fit the description of an overdose, we immediately treated for that in case, since the initial hours are the small window of opportunity to counteract such things, but made zero progress.

For privacy (as well as the fact that wifey is the smart one and I’m the assistant) I won’t go into all of the medical details, but over the course of the next months, we performed a large number of non-invasive tests to try and see what was going on.

The grass was definitely a new experience for her, this was about the best she could do to hold herself up.

Nikon d5100 for size reference, she loved the sun.

And the family photo.

Therapy is exhausting! Added wheels to try and encourage movement.

I tried my hand at several wheeled carts variations to try and promote movement on any level.

We even tried water therapy to see if we could engage a low impact swimming motion. She is not amused as you can see.

We also performed some biopsies and had an experimental acupuncture session.

Dad! This little thing is in my bed! (summer haircut on the cattle dog)

Weeeeee!

Plenty of baths were given since Noodle peed on herself often. It was sad, she felt bad, but couldn't help it. Here a little time with brother.

Additional therapy, the velcro strap was to steady her weakened feet, but try to promote muscle reactions by standing on the balance disc.

The crate is obviously too large, but it gave her room to thrash around and wiggle a bit. We soon after graduated to a play pen since it was smaller and had easier access.

We covered the house in yoga mats, foam pads, and various textures to try and give her traction to move herself on.

Even at this point she knew she wanted to go potty outside, but being completely unable to move limited her options, her “auntie” got her some lil’ swimmers while babysitting her, which kind of helped. If you took her outside and held her in the grass she would try and squat, so she knew what she wanted to do, just couldn’t actually do it.

Eventually her front paws tucked backwards under her legs, her tendons were now stronger than her muscles and were stiffening in a contracted position, so we tried giving her braces to keep her legs extended in a normal position.

As the weeks progressed, she gained some levels of stability which helped with eating, but continued to lose muscle mass on her body.

Dad gave her a little ink on her first splints

Playing around at work with mom in a cat costume, this one's a Shark

We know she was in pain, but her little voice never complained, and she was all about the kisses, she loved everyone.

Since she could no longer move, we picked up a stroller on Craigslist for a few bucks, yeah, we were those people. But she got to get out, see things, smell things.

Best seat in the house

That damn tongue, by now it was no longer able to reliably retract all the time.

Meeting a full size, normal Boston Terrier at work

What is this hooman!? (it's a carrot piece)

I’m a realist, and like I said the other half is an ER Vet, so we knew where this was headed, as much as we hoped for a miracle of sorts. She continued to weaken, but she still loved everyone and everything. She wanted to play with the other dogs, even if she couldn’t move!

As all stories like this must go, it finally came to a head in August, in the matter of one day she developed a damp breathing sound and started to show signs of labored breathing, so it was time to give her peace. (sorry, must have dust in my eye)

Took her to the wife’s work to finally make the pain stop for Noodle, those of you in the medical world can probably imagine how hard it is to administer medicine to a tiny animal who has atrophied muscles, collapsed leg vessels, and now a weakened breathing capacity. My wife is a badass, she kept it together and was there to administer the medicine to her own baby, and so we went and sat in a quiet room as Noodle gave us our final kisses and finally rested. (god damn dust in my eyes).

In the light of medical research, we did have a necropsy done, and the findings showed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, which was a little salt in the wound, the only test we didn’t perform was an MRI, and it was the worsening condition paired with the cost that was the primary factor for a vague chance of information (as is we’re still paying off these medical bills).

The only thing we know, is that it was a degenerative neuromuscular disorder.

So we just start to sew together our emotions, we carry on with our life, and sure as sh*t a month or so later, we get word that there is another Boston Terrier pupper that can’t walk coming from the same breeder (insert major pissed off feelings here). We opt to refuse this one since another group has offered to take him and honestly, we’re still pretty sad about Noodle. This pup was identical, same physical issues, same unconditionally loving attitude, same kisses, it was legitimately a clone of Noodle, the same in every way possible. And unfortunately, in the recent weeks, the same ending to that story as well, they also spent a lot of time, energy, and money to piggyback off of the tests that we had already done to try and advance the diagnosis to no success (leaving all information of this one away out of respect to those owners).

These little Boston’s have touched so many people, everyone that meets them absolutely adores them. So after the second pupper showed up, we went on the offense, the only way the breeder was surrendering these dogs was by maintaining some level of anonymity, and “per the law” they were not doing anything “illegal”, but we started pushing back to have them stop breeding these parents. We do finally hear that they’re going to stop breeding the female as they’ve isolated her as the “problem”, but they’re going to sell her at an auction (which we believe would put her right back into a breeding environment), so super long story slightly shorter, we buy Mom for *relatively* cheap. Now, we don’t like/encourage/support breeders at all, but we felt it necessary to pull mom out of this while we had the opportunity.

As you can guess, pulling a breeding dog out of a breeding environment is a huge potential for all sorts of behavioral issues, and because of the breeder situation, no one was allowed to know anything about the breeder except the dogs lived in indoor/outdoor wire cages (and in this region of the US animal rights are not terribly progressive).


So fellow inernetters, I introduce Noodle’s mother, Penne (yes, we kept the pasta theme). She is approximately 2-3 years old, currently intact but will be fixed soon, we know she’s had at least 2 litters.

We feel hope that there was some compassion at the breeder, as she really loves being by humans, that’s a plus. She has no fear of anything really, not a vacuum, other dogs, people, etc, and that’s very good. But potty training? That’s fun, we believe she’s never been in a house, but she’s learned quickly, and while she’s not perfect yet, she’s doing great.

First few nights, the other dogs were pretty jealous as she figured things out.

We believe she’s never had toys, because she’s in toy heaven now.

And the other dogs are teaching her some habits, like sleeping in dog beds, and sitting to get dinner, and she’s becoming more willing to go outside to go potty (since she’s learning she gets to come back inside immediately after)

Complete bliss!

She’s a plump little heat generator, and he’s a skinny guy who’s always cold, so we think he likes her for company as well as a warm cuddle buddy.

The first few days she absolutely lost her mind when we crated her at night, slowly she started to calm down, but still would make noise, especially early in the mornings (those beloved snooze minutes!)

Then one day our other little dog decided he wanted her crate for whatever reason. Well, she has been learning that that is her crate, so she still went in, and he wouldn’t leave, and she slept all night without a peep! Turns out she absolutely loves having a crate mate, I mean, in hindsight it makes sense since she’s had neighbors and/or puppies with her at all times. So, its’ been a month now and the 2 of them are buddies, in and out of the crate!

She's on a diet, and has already lost some weight. We want her to have a long and healthy life with us.

Turns out typing this out was pretty therapeutic, reminds me of what we find important in life. And we love our pupper that we lost, and we love the doggo’s that we currently have, they’re our kids and they remind us that not everything in this world is bad.

2016 was an emotional ride, but I'm happy this story is creating a happy ending.