:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup: Yep!

Seriously, is the sarcasm totally necessary?

In my efforts to quell any negativity, I may have inadvertently fuelled the fire, so I would like to clarify my statements above.


Firstly, with respect to insurance coverage, if the OP is not following the suggested vaccination requirements set forth by the policy, the cover would be null in void with effect from inception. So, in this instance, having insurance would not have saved this dogs life and this is where my "ignorant" statement arose.


Secondly, $10k is a lot of money. Under normal circumstances, not many could afford this and the OP would be looking at this amount with or without insurance due to the aforementioned invalidity issue. Therefore, if it was a choice between feeding kids and saving the pet...well, the kids have to come first.


However, everyone who posts here with advice (I genuinely believe) do so with good intentions. It is very hard, sometimes, to understand that when you are new to the forum or have had a previously bad experience. I don't consider myself to fit either criteria, but I have seen comments from others which suggest they do and that is why I said that some of the comments could be "construed" as judgmental.


I think education should be unbiased and I, for one, believe that constructive criticism is necessary in all areas of education but especially where lives are involved.


The OP definitely made mistakes due to being naïve, uneducated about the breed etc and it cost this dog its life. That, however, would be a very hard lesson for anyone to learn and that is why they have my sympathy.


Fortunately, for the OP and others who seek help on this forum, we have members here who are forthright in their advice which has the potential to SAVE another dog from this same fate and I think they should all be commended. It is hard to stand up in the face of adversity and the OP did well to acknowledge their mistakes so that is important should they ever consider pet ownership again.


I apologize if anything I said resulted in the meltdown of this thread. I am learning, like a lot of people, how difficult it is to communicate effectively via text! I think if we could look into each others eyes, we could see genuine concern rather than sense sarcasm etc.. but alas, we use the tools we have!


Happy Tuesday everyone x

I am just adding my two pennies worth...I hate to think what the OP is feeling right now and what her emotional state is. We all make mistakes and hope that the mistakes we make are not catastrophic ones. Yes we all learn from others misfortunes , but at least leave a bit of time to let her mourn her loss.


Shirl

I love your afterthought to come back to clarify your comments regarding insurance coverage. But I liked your original comment first time around. :)

Watch out Shirl, while I second your sympathy, many here will bite for suggesting we let her mourn. Then your comments will start getting deleted.
Mandy

this is the sick and injured thread, not the grieving thread....AGAIN as the moderator has said and the OP, lessons here were important, of anyone, I give the OP all the credit and respect in the world, she didn't get defensive and cry "attack"....she came back and posted the facts so the story could be told, and so others may learn she stuck to the substance and topic and gave a very detailed update....we all mourn the loss of her pup, this is YT.....


deletion of threads, posts etc., are not to be discussed, hence why they were deleted in the first place, if you now have an issue with the mod I think its in your best interest to contact her via pm;)

I swore I would ignore you but honestly you are so out of line. You are the one who has been doing the biting and quite frankly it is getting a tad bit old now.

It doesn't have to be difficult to combine mourning with lessons learned - BOTH are important. If this thread triggers you too much, my suggestion is you walk away from it for awhile. Your posts are being deleted bc they are attempts to bait others -- just as this one above is as well. Would appreciate it if that stopped as it serves no purpose other than to court conflict....which I don't think you'd encourage...? Thank you.

You're right, I'm very much in the wrong. I apologize. It's not me to act that way. Sorry.

This will be my last post, as it hurts to come to this forum right now. Every time I see the little yorkie with the circle above her head in the left corner, it reminds me of my Coco, as she must be in dog heaven now.

I bought this dog from a breeder for the reason that I wanted my kids to be exposed to animals in order to develop attachment and compassion to animals and to avoid future allergies to animals (some research says it works). A week after I got her (so at 9 weeks of age) I was already sorry for getting her. I love animals and my parents had a dog too, I just never knew how difficult it is to be fully responsible by yourself and not being able to count on anyone else. My kids had just been out of diapers at that point, so here comes this puppy peeing and pooping all over my house for the first 7 months of her life. I have a full time job working from home so that helped a lot with the training, but between my job and two toddlers, it still took up a big chunk of my time and I wish people knew how many hours a day it takes to train a puppy before they buy one. But I assume, just like me, few people research that.

So at some point I started regretting and even sometimes feeling anger towards the dog. I considered giving her away, but I just couldn't. I knew I will be more sorry giving her away than keeping her. I am a cancer in the zodiac and pretty much everything they say about cancers fits me to the T. So I get very attached to people and objects and hold on to them for my dear life.

Once I determined that she is staying, I promised myself to stop being angry and just do the best I could for her and live with this mistake of getting her in the first place.

Then, as it usually happens with animals, she changed me in many different ways, she made me become more patient with her and my family, she forced me to slow down and pay attention to the small things in life. We cuddled a lot and played a lot, sometimes I played more than I had time to play with my kids. But they mostly, played together, they were chasing the dog and the dog was chasing the kids, like playing tag, for hours every day.

I did not even spay her, I wanted her to have puppies, for my friends and because I didn't want her to be any any pain for any reason.

Regarding the food: I am from Romania. I lived there most of my life. You might not know this, but in Romania only about 5% of the people afford dog food. All the other dogs, including the 40 thousand stray dogs living just on Bucharest's streets, eat human food. For as long as I lived in my country I have never seen, heard or met a dog with cancer, diabetes or any other deadly disease. Broken legs and fleas were the max I have seen. Not to say that there weren't any, but just as with people, cancer and diabetes was much rare in dogs in Romania than in the US. And I am not comparing real numbers here, as I am not aware of them and never researched it, just talking from my experience with friends, neighbors, relatives in Romania versus US.

I had a health issue in the past and I have been eating organic food ever since, so it was only natural to feed my dog organic food as well. So my first stop when I got her was at the Healthy Pet store where I specifically asked what should I feed an 8 week old yorkie. They gave me some raw food and told me about quantities and sent me on my way. Coco liked the raw food, but not for long. I made the mistake of giving her couple of bites of our food, here and there, and all of the sudden she started refusing the dog food. That's when I should have talked to a specialist in pet nutrition (I didn't even know they exist) but instead I just thought "screw it, I am not spending all this money on organic raw food and then throw it in the trash". That was the moment when, encouraged by my romanian experience, I switched to human food mixed with her favorite dog food, dehydrated chicken breast and something else from organix . So she had two dog food meals and one human food meal per day. She never received lots of food, her weight when she died was 7 pounds, just like at 8 months old, which is when she last went to the vet to get her only vaccine, the rabies shot, needed for a trip to Canada. She actually looked quite skinny.

So that is the story with her food. I will not get into the vaccination issue, I don't vax my kids either and I spent 10 months reading about vaccines for humans from official and non-official sources, the issue will not be different for dogs. I was preventing parasites in my dog with natural methods.
Here is some info if you want to read more about vax and parasites:
Critter Advocacy
Dr. Clark's Pet Parasite Program
Truth about Pet Food

At the time she started drinking more water than usual I attributed the issue to the DE I was using for fleas. We went on a week long vacation and I left her with some friends who did not spray her with my essential oils before taking her out because they did not like the smell of it. So she brought home a few fleas and I was using Diatomaceous earth and I thought all that powder is drying her out and making her thirsty. But apparently it was her diabetes getting to her, as her blood sugar was over 400 when I took her to the vet (it was 230 two days later after being on IV only).

So she spent 2 days at the vet hospital and then I had to move her to the ER because the vet was closed for the weekend. The vet was only charging me 200 per day which included IV, 3 kinds of meds (pain, stomach protector and anti-vomiting) but the folks at the ER were asking 1000 per 24 hours. My intial plan was to leave her at the ER for an additional 2 days because she was not able yet to eat or keep her water down but the ER vet told me that 2 days will not be enough. I thought, fine, I will take her to the vet after that and do the 200 per day thing again for a few more days. That is when she told me that she has seen many pets with pancreatitis in the ER and that Coco is in the bottom 5% based on her blood pressure, heart rate, blood results and the fact that she is not even slightly better after the first 48 hours, on the contrary, she is worse.

I asked her if I can take her home and then just bring her back if she starts vomiting again, but she said that she is in a great deal of pain, she was making sounds all the time and that the pain meds they give her only last 6 hours and she can't take anything orally 'cause she can't keep it down. So that led me to deciding that I am not willing to spend any more money (after already spending 1000) and keeping her miserable.

I left her there at 9 PM and I called back at 11 PM because I was crying inconsolably and it was scaring my kids. I was hoping they did not kill her yet and I wanted to go and get her and give her one more chance, maybe she will start eating in the morning. I was hoping for a miracle. But it was too late when I called, which made me feel very bitter towards the ER personnel. I just thought to myself, "I can't believe they killed her right away, as soon as no one was paying anymore". Especially because they stabilized her, and I even paid 350 just for them looking at her and giving her the 3 meds to bring her blood pressure up to normal. I thought "What kind of vets are these, to kill the dog right away, as I stepped out the door". And then the next day I started second guessing what they told me about her not surviving the night if I bring her home. Would they really rather have her killed to force me to pay instead of admitting that she might have a chance if I bring her home. Or when I was trying to negotiate the price of the bill from 2 K to 1 K, I said "Can you just charge me the hospitalization fee (200 per night) plus IV plus meds and don't do all the other extra stuff, like blood pressure (4 times 68 dollars) or ultrasound (350)". She said no. If I didn't agree to the full amount they wanted me to take her away. So there was a lot of pressure combined with despair and later lack of trust. But I will always regret not taking her home and giving her another chance. Maybe in the morning I could have taken her to a cheaper hospital on the south side, I don't know, and now I never will. Thinking back, she didn't look like dying to me, yes she couldn't eat, drink or walk, but her eyes did not look to me like she is dying, she looked fully aware of me being with her and was curious when she heard sounds and looked that way.

I was not able to stay with her after I signed the paper, I am not cut out that way. I would have probably darted out the door with her, you can't sign a paper like that and then look in her eyes. My kids did surprisingly well, they both said that they will miss her and they are so sorry that she died but neither of them cried as I was expecting.They don't know the details, I just told them that she died because I gave her human food and that was a mistake and made her sick and that she is with Jesus now and she is OK. They asked for another pet and I said no. I explained to them that pets don't live long and we will be sad again when they die. I know that the benefits of having a pet far outweigh the pain of loosing one, but I am not ready to tell that to my kids yet because I am not ready to have another pet. Maybe I will consider fostering, or just play with my friend's pets. I know it made me happy when others were playing with my pet, so now I can return that favor.

All you lucky (and smart) ones out there that still have a pet, I wish you many years of happiness alongside them and hug them and give them many kisses, all the hugs and kisses that Coco missed out on.

I attached a picture of Coco.

Coco is sooo cute! You sound like a very nice, caring person. We all make mistakes so please don't beat yourself up. I have made mistakes along the way, as has every one else. Thanks for sharing your story. I am sad for you that you lost your baby. Don't blame yourself for something that you didn't know about.

Just know that little Coco is a little Yorkie in Heaven now. She knew how much you loved her. She is not suffering anymore. You did what the vet recommeded and you should not look back with questions about it. You really should not blame yourself. You loved that little baby and tried to do everything to save her. My heart goes out to you and your family for your loss.

I'm glad you posted. After I read your last PM last night I was thinking I don't know this pups name and was going to pm you back to ask, this was so much a surprise and I'm so glad you attached a pic of Dear Sweet Coco....peace to all, thank you for all the lessons learned here, CoCo's story is very important in so many ways....RIP Coco.

There are just no word for this tragic story. RIP Sweet Coco.