A Very Rough Weekend

This was a very rough weekend on the farm....

Some of you may remember when I posted a year and a half ago introducing the newest member of the family, Princess Fiona of Fair Haven.  The title of that post was A Perfectly Wonderful Weekend. This weekend we lost our Princess when she was hit by a car in front of our house.

We were not home when the accident occurred.  Thankfully for us, Tragically for them, Jen and Randy were here visiting.  We were at Mom Klik's 91st birthday celebration.  Jen and Randy had just returned home from having dinner out.  The dogs were let out and within a minute Randy heard a loud noise and knew that something had been hit.  He ran to the door and and called for the dogs, threw on his shoes and started down the driveway where Bella and their dog, Winston, ran to him. Randy found Fiona on the side of the road.  She was unable to move her back legs and her front leg were out stiff in front of her.  She was not bleeding and her breathing did nto appear to be labored. Jen called us as Randy loaded Fiona into their van to be brought to the hospital where we met them.

Fiona was taken into ICU and we prepared ourselves mentally to lose her.  We believed her back was probably broken and we would need to humanely put her down.  It felt like we were there forever and it was agonizing to hear our girl whimpering and crying in pain.  After a couple of hours, the doctor met with us and told us that the xrays showed that there were no broken bones, however they were unable to get good films of her neck because of the pain Fiona was suffering.  The doctor further said that the films showed no signs of lacerations or tears in any of Fi's organs.  Fi's stomach was filled with air but she felt that was due to the trauma of the impact and that Fi was extremely bruised and sore.  The only damage that she could confirm at this point was a torn ligament in Fi's leg that could be remedied with surgery.

The doctor said that she would like to keep Fi hospitalized with strong pain medication in an IV drip and monitor her over the weekend.  Once the pain was under control they would be able to get better films of her neck area and the doctor thought that would show a subluxation of the spine that would also be able to be treated.  We were relieved and happy that the diagnosis was not the death sentence that we believed we were going to hear.

We signed away a good portion of our savings (I didn't really want a new kitchen floor anyway) and went home with a prayer of gratitude.  At 6 am our phone rang, it was the vet who advised that Fiona continued to worsen during the night and that she had what appeared to be a slow arterial bleed and that her stomach had filled with blood.  The doctor said that, if we chose, she could do exploratory surgery to see if she could find the tear, she also advised at this time the the paralysis to the front legs had not eased at all and they were still unable to get good films of Fi's neck.  We made the very difficult decision to have her put down at this time.

This tragedy came right on the heels of our having to have our Buddy Boy put down at the beginning of this month.

This leaves us now with only or Bella Baby who you see lying here next to her Dad.  She spent all day yesterday roaming from room to room and to all ends of the yard in search of her brother and sister.  When she is not roaming she sits next to us and whines.  It is breaking our hearts.

Last night as we climbed into bed to cry ourselves to sleep, Frank said we needed to get another puppy right away, for Bella and for him, and that he wanted another chocolate lab even though he knows the chances of getting another lab puppy as good and as calm as Fi would be rare.  I told him we would worry about it after Easter....I don't know that my heart is ready for another puppy just now.....