On Saturday we took Cricket to the vet. My husband the scientist figured it was a good idea to have her looked over, and the fact that she went into heat the day before made it perfect timing. We wanted to be sure that the spots of blood all over the laundry room floor really were what we thought they were!
The vet came in and immediately wanted to talk us into getting her spayed, which was no surprise. (Thanks to her small size, she'd have to mate with another small dog in order to be able to have puppies.) As the vet checked Cricket out, though, her alarm grew. And grew. And when we mentioned that oh yeah, she's kind of passed out a few times where she'll randomly fall over, but then she gets right back up and is fine - the concern continued to rise. Suddenly there was a need for bloodwork, urinalysis, and an x-ray.
Turns out, poor Cricket has an enlarged spleen, anemia, some fancy word for the fact that she faints, and something else wrong with the oxygen in her blood.
"She really is a lemon!" I said in disbelief.
I have to give credit to the vet, who understood our firm decision not to spend $400 to see a dog cardiologist and get an ultrasound (!). She informed us that the worst case scenario was that the dog lives the rest of her days happily in our house, and we informed her that was the course we would be taking. She said she'd call us on Tuesday with more results - if the dog made it that long.
We went in for a $50 checkup and walked out with a $360 bill and a dying dog. The plus side? They didn't charge for her nail trimming.
I can only halfway joke about it because Cricket does not at all appear to be at death's doorstep. She's just as perky as when we got her, and seems perfectly happy and healthy. She jumps through the snow and onto the sofas like nothing's wrong.
But our vet seems certain that Cricket will be leaving us any day now. She called us that evening to check. She still couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong with the dog. She called again the next afternoon. And again Monday. Finally this afternoon we took the dog in for one last round of bloodwork. A $110 bill later, and we've hit our limit. We really like our vet and appreciate her genuine concern, but this is a dog after all. We won't be spending any more money on her, unless it is to go ahead and spay her.
As my dad said, looks like Uncle Jimmy knew when to get rid of a dog!