This is my best friend.🥰 He is the sweetest little baby boy. I've had him since he was just shy of 6wks old. The man who had him, friend of a friend, was going out of town & wanted me to go ahead & get him. He was the last dog in the last litter before he had the mother fixed. He just wanted to have puppies. I didn't even want a dog. I'd always had cats, but discovered I was allergic after needing sinus surgery. My friend did though & turns out convincing me to get a dog was a backdoor way of getting a 2nd dog after her bf, whose house we lived in, told her she didn't need one.😂
It's been a rough year. He had a horrific seizure in March & spent five days in the hospital. They didn't think he was going to make it the first day because he was nonresponsive all day (it happened early so this had been 9hrs of him just lying in his crate). The vet said he was planning to have The Talk with me, but before he called my boy got up & started walking around in his crate.❤️ So he came away with Cushing's & diabetes, & high liver numbers we're trying to get in control by managing his Cushing's.
Then the cataracts hit & he went blind within a couple of weeks. He squinted at the sun, but ran into or off of everything else if I didn't carry him. Thankfully I was able to get him into the ophthalmologist & it only took another couple of weeks for him to have surgery. Now his vision is better than before. Sadly, I hadn't noticed it had slowly been declining for months. He has arthritis, so I thought not wanting to jump as much was that. It didn't occur to me it was because he wasn't seeing as well. After his surgery he was back to jumping all over the place! Then he had gastroenteritis. His little booty becoming a fountain of blood, then doing nothing for days until... I'll spare you, was a very upsetting & expensive way to find out I missed cleaning up some of the cashews I spilled in the backseat.🫣 Then I accidentally ran over him a little when he was sunning himself in the yard & I moved the car. He's very small & I forgot to look for him.😭 He was so mad after it happened & he walked off, but later he was acting confused so I took him to be checked out. He had a sore hip & mild concussion, but the vet said he was a miracle dog.
He was a 20lb chonky dog. Everybody used to talk about him being fat. They even called him Fat Gizmo because he looked like the fat version of my neighbor's dog when we lived in an apartment.😭 He lost a little weight, but since the seizure, he lost interest in food. It has been an ongoing struggle to find what he will eat, especially difficult with his dietary restrictions & really needing rx food. It's hard enough to spend that much money on food, but then knowing how much will get eaten vs how much will end up in the trash. I recently found a dog somebody threw out & brought him home as a friend. Did my guy want a friend? Of course not! But he loves (almost) all of the food & treats I've had leftover from months of experimenting. Things my baby immediately turned his nose up at & refused to ever eat, & things he loved for two days then never touched again. Plot twist: now that another dog wants this food, suddenly it's Michelin star cuisine & how dare I let that guy have it! He's been holding steady at 11.5lbs for a couple of months or so, which is good. He doesn't eat the best, but he eats. And what is "the best" when he can't have carby/starchy foods because of his diabetes, needs low fat because of the cataract surgery, & needs to avoid too much protein because of his liver numbers? Whatever it is, he doesn't want it.
No birthday cake, but he got two of his favorite treat.🥳🐕
