Liz's 12 year old little Pomeranian Abby crossed the rainbow bridge yesterday morning. :sadangel:
Abby has been with us for the last 5 years. Liz found her at the animal shelter while she was there assessing another large dog for a rescue group. Abby was 7 years old at the time and had been dropped at the shelter because her original owner had died, and her granddaughter could not take care of the dog.
Liz fell in love with her immediately, and after much pressure she convinced me to let her adopt her.
Abby pranced into our house, hopped up on the back of the sofa, and immediately started bossing around our German Shepard, and Weimaraner.
For several years we had many different other foster dogs (Wiem's and GSD's) filter in and out of the family, Abby kept them all in line.
She was Liz's little shadow, always at her feet, in her lap, or laying above her head. Liz absolutely loved her, and she absolutely loved Liz. :angel:
On Saturday she was her normal self, bouncing around the house like a young dog, snarling at the big dogs when necessary to keep them in line, and following Liz everywhere she went. No one noticed anything different about her until about 9:30. We had finished eating dinner and were sitting at the table talking with our guests when we all heard a strange noise coming from under the table. It turned out to be Abby, she was twitching her face and spitting up large amounts of foam. This went on for several minutes unabated, so we rushed her to the emergency vet hospital.
The vet told us that the twitching and foaming were the result of seizures, and she was continuing to have them on and off at the hospital. They felt reasonably certain that they could control the seizures with medication. We left her overnight feeling fairly certain that she was in good hands, and that they would be able to stabilize her. Liz talked to them several times on Sunday and the prognosis sounded fairly good. They gave her phenobarbital Sunday morning and monitored her all afternoon.
By 9:30 Sunday night she had been seizure free for more than 12 hours, so they allowed us to take her home. She was completely loopy and nearly unresponsive, but the vet said that was because of the drugs, and by morning she should come out of it and be more functional.
Unfortunately that was not the case. :sad: Abby's condition was even worse. After an early morning visit to our regular vet, she was referred to a neurologist.
The neurologist told us that Abby's brain was probably swelling out of her skull. She said the original symptoms (the seizures) originated in the front of the brain, but now she was completely unresponsive to stimuli, and that was a function of the back of the brain, and brain stem. It could have been caused by either a tumor, or by meningitis. Either way it was most likely untreatable. :sadangel:
Abby passed peacefully in Liz's arms. :sadangel:
This is Abby a few months ago with one of our Weimaraners:
http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...pstx6xlgp6.jpg