Abby Sweets

[AbbyGus]

I believe something just a little different than the rainbow bridge. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to take up avoiding stepping on spiders, but here goes. I’ve thought long and hard about what and who we are as living things on this planet, and I think it comes down to the energy..spirit..that inhabits the living body, whether it be human, canine, or even that fuzzy spider.

Abby’s spirit was a timid, bright, incredibly sweet presence inhabiting the squished face of a melt your heart pug. I truly believe that when our spirits take leave of earthly form, we’ll all find each other again and the joy will be beyond what we can imagine. Energy is never created or destroyed, only changed.

Sherry put her heart and soul into doing right by the two new members of the family. She resisted abandoning them on a street corner when they put tooth marks on the legs of every piece of furniture in the house. They never learned to sleep anywhere but their crates until they were totally housebroken. Abby never liked to jump up onto the bed, preferring to be lifted up instead, and she had the most Pit-eee-full cry ever to convince you. They even went to puppy kindergarten, though I cannot say that they were honor students. We did come out with being able to sit and lay when bribed with food and to “Kennel up!” but that was all we got out of higher learning.

Everyone who had any contact with Abby had the same thing to say, and there were many who said it.

“That is one sweet little dog you have.”

She was also incredibly stubborn. She hated to go outside to do her business, even though she rarely had accidents. Especially when it was cold, she would hold it for hours rather than go outdoors. She’d sit at the top of the stairs, wagging her tail and steadfastly refusing to come down. When you came up to get her, she’d put her head down, her cinnamon roll tail up, and do that little “let’s play instead!” hop.
She was also the boss dog. All toys were Abby’s toys. All chewies were Abby’s chewies. She would get her own chewie, then sit on Gus’ to make sure. Poor Gus is incredibly sweet as well and loved Sister so much he’d just let her get away with it.

She’d circle Gus’ breakfast dish like a little shark, and at one point when I stood between her and his dish, and she’d done all she could to dodge past me, she took off upstairs in a huff to tattle on me to Mom.

Her greatest joys in life were playing tuggy and fetchy fetch tirelessly. We had a long and ongoing battle over my pink slippers, in which she would steal one and run like heck when she thought I wasn’t looking. Slippers were great for the game of Scoot a Shoe, played by placing one flat puggy face into one fairly slick bottomed shoe, then running like a psycho pug, scooting the shoe along the floor. Her brother Gus wants nothing more than to have his sister back to play Race and Chase and Bite and Fight.

Abby was taken from us while still just a baby girl, with so much good life and sniffing to do. PDE robbed us of our darling. I am a neuro nurse. I have studied the brain, anatomy, physiology, and have seen enough in my time taking care of humans that I don’t care how many Vets tell me I’m wrong, I think this was connected to a serious allergic reaction to a rabies vaccine. I think Abby was predisposed to PDE; it is after all genetic, but I also think the inflammatory response from that reaction triggered her PDE. It just makes too much sense to me to believe otherwise. We had a happy, glowingly healthy little girl until that vaccine, and 4 weeks later, Gussy’s sister is dead.

I agreed to run the dogs to the vets for their scheduled shots, since Sherry the Mom had to work. Shots as usual; doing the Right Thing by our animals. We get home, and Gus is for some reason standing stock still in the doorway. I call him, and offer him a treat, and get no response, which scares me. He takes a few steps, and falls flat over on his side. My son Aaron is interning with a veterinarian, and I frantically call for him while running to Gus, who is just laying there, barely responsive. I’m throwing on shoes and screaming for Aaron to check his heart and breathing, which, thank God, are still happening. We rush to the vet, me shaking his scruff to keep him awake, and Gus, who loves going Bye Bye more than life itself, is barely breathing. We get to the vet, he gets benedryl and (I think) cortisone, and becomes the pug version of Lazarus.

After a pee your pants scare, we go home, thinking all is well. I take one look at Abby and say some Very Bad Words. Her eyes are swelling shut. Resignedly I scoop her up and head back to the vet for the third time that afternoon. By the time we get there she has no wrinkles and her eyes are nearly swollen shut.

About 10 days or so after our problems, we noticed Abby was not feeling well. She seemed lethargic. She would not jump down from beds or chairs or go down the stairs. She’d never liked jumping up, but down had never been an issue. Her hind quarters were trembling, and as she sat looking at us, she’d squint her eyes. Back to the vet we went. He carefully examined her physically, and when he got to her neck she let out a yelp. Having seen her in action shaking her toys to death, it didn’t surprise me she had a neck injury.

We went home with a course of prednisone. Being the good nurse, I carefully wrote out a schedule for Mom, with the tapering days included. Mom, being the excellent Puggy mom, dutifully scratched off each dose on our little homemade Medication Record. After the first day Abby is perking up, beating up her brother. Business as usual.

On the first day of the taper, I cleaned the heck out of the house. This involves yelling at certain flat nosed family members to get out of the dust pile from sweeping the floor, and butt tuck side to side hopping after the vacuum monster. I took a shower after, and just when I was finished, Mom noticed Abby was acting funny. We thought maybe she’d swallowed something she shouldn’t because she had a little foam around her lips. This was on the stairwell, and was right after a session of getting the monster sneaking up the stairs. She went downstairs and before I could even finish getting dressed, Mom was panicked, telling me she thought she was having a seizure. I began throwing on clothes on my way down, trying to maintain that nurse calm to reassure my patients. Abby was on her side in full tonic/clonic, grand mal, foaming like a rabid dog.

Our vet met us there. Abby seized the entire trip. For one brief second, after an IV was finally in her slender arm, she looked up at the vet. That was our last glimpse of the real Abby.

At least 45 minutes later, she finally relaxed into an IV Phenobarbital stupor. She screamed, as only pugs can, for the entire duration of the seizure. I have seen things like this. I have watched codes called on humans after 5 minutes of being status. I’ve seen them die. My mom has not. The hammer hit her heart when Abby gave that same Pit-eee-Full cry she used to get up on the bed, and shattered it into a million pieces.

She and I both spent the next two nights in feverish web browsing. PDE had already been brought up and we were desperate for information. I searched every combination of words I could think of. I posted on the pug village message board I’d haunted for information and cute pictures of pugs for the first time ever. I did not sleep, I barely ate, and Sherry the Mom was doing the same thing. I worked two nights, crying whenever anyone asked me how I was doing. Sherry the mom did the same thing.

We brought Abby home. She was like a little drunken sailor, and frightenly so. She careened around the living room at full speed, crashing into furniture and entirely missing her jump to the couch. Once again, I had to work, and had to leave my mom, terrified of more seizures, to sit with our little brain injury patient. Abby paced. At first she trotted full tilt all over the house, then all over again. She tried to sit for a treat, her puppy kindergarten training not forgotten. She enthusiastically nosed a favorite toy. She came when called. Gus followed her faithfully, but never tried any Bite and Fight. He’s such a good boy.

At around 11, I got a text from mom that she was till pacing. At around 4 am I got a text from mom saying that she felt terrible but had accidentally fallen asleep and Abby was still pacing. During my downtime at work I spent 38 bucks to chat with a vet in Michigan who told me, not unkindly, that while he understood I wanted to blame the rabies vaccine, Abby was showing all signs of PDE. If it were his dog he’d euthanize. My son told us the next day that the vet he is interning with said the same thing.

I finally got home. Abby had passed out, literally, on Mom’s bed for about 10 minutes, but was back up rounding the house again, walking this time. She was no longer Abby. Her darling face was haggard, confused. When she could be persuaded to lie down, she would slip into such a deep sleep that she was more like a limp dishrag than a pug, but her breathing was so light and shallow that I expected it to stop at any moment. We spent two hours of this, then while Abby was on the floor near my mom, she pressed her little head into the couch. That was when we decided to call the vet.

I am so glad we decided to bring her home after her horrifying seizure. I don’t know how much of the little spirit was left, but I do think some of it got to see her favorite things again. We got to hold her and stroke her silky ears, and feel her warm, solid little weight on our laps. The vet came, and while Abby was frightened and cried over the needle stick, she was surrounded by people, cats, and a brother that loved her more than words can ever say as she passed over from solid mass to bright and free spirit.

The grief chokes me. I was crying so hard I thought I would suffocate. I went into the garage and whisper screamed every cuss word I’ve ever known. I punched the wall. This pain is more than I feel like I can take sometimes. I can’t make my mind be still, so I wrote this rather longish journal to try to exorcise some of the horror of the past few days.

Tonight Gus carried around his baby, trying to flush her out to play, and let out a whine that sent my mom and I both into sobs of sympathy. He has never known a time without Sister.

Abby, my darling, sweet, bright little spirit, we’ll find you again one day. I am so glad that your short little life was shared with us, so grateful for the immense joy in knowing and loving you, and so glad you came to us so that you would know only love and devotion in your time in this realm of being. Good night Sister. I’ll take care of Gussy for you, I promise.