A turn for the worse

Elska's illness earns her an upgrade onto furniture

I knew that the road to recovery would be an arduous process for the both of us and Elska as well. Daily visits to the doctor were a must and since we lived in Malabe I was paying 1850/- per day for Elska’s treatment and for three-wheeler fare to and fro. I thanked whoever was listening every day that we had international funding. On the morning of Elska’s second visit to the vet, we discovered a nasty surprise in our balcony. She had left us a little present and close inspection revealed streaks of blood in her stool. I didn’t think anything of it at first and had stayed at home from work and so sent the husband to the vet in my place.

Deep asleep

When he returned from the vet that afternoon Elska was in good spirits and did her little jump of joy when she saw me. I asked the husband what had conspired in my absence and he said that when they inserted the thermometer into Elska’s bum it came away with more blood. They had instructed him to watch for vomiting and to bring her immediately if she did. It was then that my heart sank down to my toes and twenty feet into the ground below them. The dreaded P word snaked its way into my anxious mind and fear bloomed like a mushroom cloud of dust after an explosion in my chest.  What had I done by bringing Elska into my home? Had I put the lives of my own dogs at risk? I knew the Parvovirus could take months, even years to disintegrate and their wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I would find every single area where Elska had pooped and spray it with bleach. I ran to my laptop and googled Parvovirus. What I found gave me some relief I must admit. As long as my dogs were vaccinated they were safe and in addition Elska only showed one sign of the many symptoms of Parvovirus, which was bloody diarrhea. The others such as vomiting and fever were not present. Parvovirus is a virus which is at present the biggest killer of puppies. It functions by causing enteritis which is an inflammation of the intestines.  This is followed by severe vomiting and blood in the stool, fever and lowered white count. It is rare in adult dogs and an adult dog may not exhibit any visible symptoms. There is no cure for the virus itself only palliative treatment is administered to protect the dog from dehydration. Antibiotics may also be given to snuff out any infection that may further hinder the dog. Contrary to popular belief the virus is airborne but is only spread through fecal matter. It is however, highly contagious.

Another thing I found in my research was that dog owners that had experienced this disease firsthand all reported that the diarrhea from an infected dog had a distinct odour. A pungent, sickly smell of decay and an undertone of an incredible sweetness. They all agreed that whatever the smell was like, once you smelled it, you’d never forget it. So I took Elska down to the garden and I waited for her to poop.

I am not ashamed to say it, I have done it before and will do it again. Sometimes you have to go through sh*t to save a dog. I mean this in the literal sense. You have to sift through their sh*t. So I waited for Elska to poop and when she did I got down on my hands and knees and got a big whiff. It smelled about as disgusting as it should, no more and no less. There was blood in it though. Unmistakable red blood, not the dark kind that has been processed through the system. I was unhappy with my finding so I decided to dig a little deeper. So I got a stick and I dug. I held the stick to me nose and again smelled nothing too foul. So far so good!

I took a moment to look hastily behind me as there is a construction site in the neighbouring land and it was quite likely that 200 odd workers just saw me poke a pile of poo with stick and sniff it. But my dignity had to take a backseat. For now at least.

The blood in her stool worried me but I knew that there were a hundred different causes for that and as the day progressed I began to worry less and less. Elska slept for several hours and at around five in the evening I noticed that she was sleeping a little longer than I thought was normal. I ran down the stairs in a clever ploy to see if she would follow me as she always did but this time, she didn’t. She was so deeply asleep that she didn’t even notice I was gone. When I carried outside for her business she felt a little limp in my arms. When I set her down she tried to crawl under our jeep. Something was wrong I was sure of it.

Elska meets her new daddy

Elska's best sad face

 They gave her shots, which she didn’t like and sent us home. She ate a big lunch and a big dinner and we headed off to bed. I knew I would have to wake up in the middle of the night when my husband returned, so as to ensure that Elska didn’t get frightened when she saw him for the first time. He is a tall man, my husband. At around one a.m I heard the sound of our jeep and got out of bed. Elska got off her rug and went downstairs and then came back up again. She looked nervous. I carried her down once more and while she was still in my arms I instructed my husband to pet her. He said “Hello Elska” and patted her head, gently. I set her down then, at which point she nervously scampered behind me and sat. But she allowed my husband to pet her and I could see that she was relaxing under his touch.

Elska on her Daddy's lap, on the way to the vet

We went back upstairs and I recounted the whole story of Elska, what the pet shop owner had said and what the vet had said too. My husband too was shocked at how cruelly she had been treated. When you pass by or see a dog in a situation like that, it is upsetting to be sure. But when you begin to get to know the dog, and the dog becomes your own, the emotion that you feel is overwhelming.

Skinny little Dachsund

I know my dogs you see. As in I really know them. They all have distinct personalities, some are not morning dogs and others get offended if we are in bed past sunrise. Some are tactile creatures, reveling in any kind of affection while others are aloof. All dogs are loyal but some follow you from room to room. Dogs exhibit  marked characteristics and are extremely expressive. If you know how , you can understand a dogs psyche far more than you could imagine. It is this understanding that leads to well balanced dogs. If you know what they need as opposed to what they want, or what you would like to give them, then you are in a better position to raise a dog.

In the little time that I had gotten to know Elska I could see glimpses of her personality that shone through, despite her inherent nervousness. I knew already that she was extremely affectionate and was an attention fiend. She would take any kind of attention whenever she could get it, even when in a deep sleep were I to reach out and stroke her, subconsciously she would show me her stomach so that I could rub it. She slept the fittest if I kept her on my chest or lap. And she was my little shadow. She followed me everywhere. She had a perpetual need to know where I was at all times. She was a good dog, sensitive to my tone of voice and obedient. She would make a great pet and companion, with a little work and a lot of love I was beginning to realise that Elska was indeed living up to my belief that she could indeed be the world’s best dog if only someone would care to find out. I had cared and so did my husband now. It was a chance we took, but it slowly began to take shape as one of the best decisions we had ever made in our lives.

New places, new faces and new vets

Elska itched continuously and intensely for long periods of time

 

I woke up at the astonishing time of 6.00 am on a Sunday morning to call my husband (still out of town) and to check on my new dog. Elska showed sincere happiness when she saw me that morning. She did a sort of an electrocuted jump for joy when I said ‘Good morning Elska!’. She seemed more relaxed in her new surroundings. I now had enough ammo to win my husband over with woeful tales of this mistreated dog, and upon relating the story of the incident where she shrunk from me as if I would hit her, it was a done deal.

Elska's mange

Elska ate, or rather swallowed her breakfast and did her business in the house, to be expected as she had obviously not been toilet trained. I reprimanded her gently but firmly and she ran a few feet away from me when I did so. I would learn with time that Elska’s toilet habits were rather strange. She couldn’t ‘go’ with us watching her and her as soon as she made her business she would hide, even outside she would run under our jeep and peer at me to gage my reaction. Even when I praised her for peeing outside she would stop midway as though she really needed me to go away for everything to go smoothly. I wondered if this was a result of my reprimanding her on that first day, maybe she didn’t know that peeing inside was bad, but thought that peeing in general was bad. Or more likely that her previous owner had not taken too well to her peeing in the cage. Either way, Elska needed her own space for toilet time and really, which one of doesn’t?

I watched her a lot on her first morning. She spent a lot of time just looking out at our garden. We have a one acre property which can seem infinite to a small dog. She explored some, ate a few plants and was already following me everywhere. In the meantime, previous holder of the title of most pampered dog, Tinkerbell was giving me a cold shoulder worthy of the North Pole. I wished there was some way to explain to her that she was spoiled and had been told she was wonderful every single day of her life, and Elska had a lot of love and attention to make up for, but of course she was a dog and I didn’t speak dog.

Elska takes an immediate liking to three-wheeler rides

 

Of course Elska had to be taken to the vet. I had no idea what was wrong or what could be wrong and there was the matter of vaccines too. My usual vet from my first dog has been Dr. Ching on Fife Road. Yes, he has been there forever. But he is still, in my opinion, the best vet in Colombo. I hear mixed reviews about Dr. Ching. Some hate him and others swear by him. My personal take on him is this, Dr. Ching can’t stand stupid people. If you are intelligent and take an interest in your animals then you are worth his time. He has saved Tinkerbell time and time again from the brink of death (she is a very sickly girl) and I know without a shadow of doubt that any other vet would have left me with a dead dog. I have the utmost confidence in Dr. Ching and would trust his judgment wholeheartedly. I like to think he likes me too. Well more than he likes my husband at least. When he inquires about any ailments the dogs have on their regular visits Dr. Ching has been known to reply with a short “ask your wife, she will know”. He also calls my husband Mr. Aiyar, which is my last name. It is painfully obvious who he thinks wears the pants in the family.

I took Elska on in a three-wheeler to the doctors. When we got there, thankfully Dr. Ching himself was there. I placed Elska on the exam table and Dr. Ching took one look at her and said “Why have you bought this dog??” 

Under his stern gaze I explained myself to which he announced to no one in particular as the three people on duty at the clinic that day were in the room with us, “see this Miss Ashwini has gone to buy a rooster and bought this dog BECAUSE SHE FELT SORRY”. He emphasized the last part to make sure that everyone understood why I had made such a stupid decision. To be honest I think he did think I was a little bit of an idiot for buying her. But only a little.

At the vet

He then instructed the other doctor to test for filaria. Micro filaria, or heartworms is a common condition that many dogs in this country suffer from. It is transmitted through mosquitoes and it can cause death. The problem with this disease is though it is simple to test for, there are no visible symptoms in the dog until the disease has progressed to the latter and deadly stages. If you own a dog, I urge you strongly to check them regularly for heartworms.

Dr. Ching proceeded to list Elska’s ailments loudly and with disdain. “Aiyo mange, you will have to apply and give tablets”. “Aiyo weak knees, must be from being in the cage” and then finally when the slide was ready for viewing he sat down in front of the microscope and yelled at me from the next room “Aiyo, VERY BAD case of filaria” and then again to no one in particular “see this Ms. Ashwini’s dog has a VERY BAD case of filaria”

I was then ordered to see the worms under the microscope myself. In that one droplet (I say droplet here, because it wasn’t even a proper drop) that was smeared across the slide, there were no fewer than seven worms. Dr. Ching counted. The worms appeared like thin glass noodles and made darting ‘s’ shaped movements as I watched, like snakes that propel themselves forward by using objects in the vicinity and form those reptilian, quivery movements on National Geographic advertisements. So at seven worms per droplet, that meant that there were millions of worms coursing through Elska’s blood. I knew then that Elska would have been dead in a month when the worms infested her little heart and stilled it forever.

My Heart Breaks

Elska likes rugs. Indoors and outdoors

Certain things about me have to clarified at this point. I run, what I can confidently call the best boarding kennel in Sri Lanka in my backyard (as you have probably deduced if you are reading this blog).  This career move came out of a sincere love of all things furry which is a congenital defect and there is no known cure. The moment I got married to a man, who loves animals as much as I do but cleverly disguises it beneath his thin ‘I am a man and I have no feelings’ veneer, I began to systematically acquire every kind of animal I could afford to keep. My household now has within it five dogs, three silkie hens, one silver phoenix rooster and two phoenix hens, two guinea fowls, four cats and two guinea pigs. Throw in the twenty something guppies that swim around in a large cement bowl and you have yourself an authentic menagerie. 

So when Elska went upstairs for the first time, she waddled around, sniffing here and there and found herself in my large upstairs bathroom. The bathroom is also where my guinea pigs (Peanut and Ball) live, beneath the sink and accompanying counter where there is an open space that has been boarded off just for them. Elska couldn’t see over the wooden boards which the other dogs could, but just like any other dog she smelled a rat, or in this case some kind of rodent to be sure. I was afraid that in her excitement or having never  been exposed to a guinea pig she may hurt them or make one her dinner. I allowed her to sniff but the moment she jumped up to bang her paws against the wooden boards, I reacted.

I don’t hit my dogs. Sure, I give them an obligatory and completely useless pat on the bottom when they misbehave and equally useless warnings of ‘mummy will smack’ permeate the air in my house several times a day, but my dogs know that ‘mummy’ wouldn’t hurt a fly, though she has murdered her fair share of mosquitoes. What I do when they do something to upset me is voice a sharp “no” which happens simultaneously with a stern wag of my index finger. So when Elska jumped up, I said ‘no’ and raised my hand to wag my finger at her.

As she saw my hand come up, she shrunk from me, turning her head to a side, her eyes closed in anticipation of pain. As Elska cowered from me, I lowered my finger and got down on my knees to turn her face toward mine. I knew she had been hurt then, beaten perhaps. Tears flowed freely down my face as I wept for my Elska and what she had endured. I wept for her, as I am sure no one had done before. I wept because it seemed so unjust. Elska was a dog and she could have bitten anyone who tried to hurt her. She could have bitten me or growled in warning. She could have even run away and found a hiding place. But Elska chose to accept what she thought was a beating. As though if I had deemed that she deserved it then she must deserve it after all. I held her little head in my hands and I said my promise to her out loud. “Don’t worry Elska. No one will ever hurt you ok? I promise”

I worried that on her first night in the way that most new dogs do, Elska would want to join me on the bed. I already share my bed with Tinkerbell, my Dalmatian who hogs my sheets and snores in my ear. I had to be mindful of what Elska may have brought along with her from the pet shop, like ticks and mites so I hoped she wouldn’t whine to sleep with me. Most dogs immediately figure out that the way to my heart is through whining. But I had forgotten of course that Elska knew nothing of furniture, of pillows and sheets. She only knew of the chicken wire in her cage so she found a rug and curled up and slept for the first time, in her new home.