What’s going on with Henry

If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time, you probably know that I have an incredible hound dog named Henry.

Henry didn’t have a name when I got him almost 8 years ago.  He only had a number.  There was a “puppy mill” in South Carolina that had been churning out hunting dogs (and if you want to know about the abuses suffered by mill dogs and hunting dogs that are used as equipment and not living things, I can tell you about that another time).  The mill was raided for making moonshine - not for the animal cruelty sadly, but at least all the animals were confiscated and sent to shelters across several states.

It had been three years since my dog Aremis had died and it was finally time for me to get another dog in my life.  I’m a big proponent of rescue/shelter dogs, so I went to my local shelter and visited with several.  I eventually selected a chow mix named Mercedes, but I noticed that she had a little wound on her side.  They said they would have their vet look at it in the morning and that I could come get her afterwards.  On the way out, I noticed a medium sized brindle dog, curled up in a ball.  Somehow I had not seen him when I had been walking around the shelter.  My mind kept going back to him and not Mercedes over the next few hours.

When I went to collect Mercedes in the morning, she was not in her kennel.  It turns out that the wound I had noticed on her side was actually infected and she was in surgery to clean it up.  While I was waiting for information on her, I saw the brindle dog again.  I asked if I could see him while they were checking on Mercedes.  He stayed curled in a ball and shaking the whole time I tried to interact with him.  He did not respond to my little niece’s attempts to play with him.  He was too severely traumatized.  I felt terrible because I had already agreed to adopt Mercedes and there was no way I could take two dogs.  When I went to the front desk to talk to them, I saw Mercedes chart out.  There was a note on it - it said that a young couple wanted to adopt her if she was still available when they got back from vacation.  I knew they were meant to have her, and I was meant to have the brindle dog.  I told them to discard my application for Mercedes, and I took Henry home.  They were reluctant to let me have him.  They thought he needed to be euthanized, that he wouldn’t recover from his trauma. 

It was a slow road to recovery.  Both of his ear drums had been ruptured from infection.  He had to go under anesthesia twice to have them flushed and we battled the infection for a year before I was able to get it under control; his hearing was always limited.  He had tears from tags getting ripped out and scars from God knows what.  He was missing teeth.  He got gastroenteritis at the drop of a hat.  He was positive for lyme disease and anaplasmosis.  Worst of all was the fear and emotional trauma.

Through love and patience, he slowly got better.  We’ve had our ups and downs with his health, but he’s become the most wonderful dog in the world.  We do everything together, we go everywhere together.  We’ve been there for each other through everything.

I don’t have a family of my own.  He’s all I have.

We’ve been a little nomadic the last few months, while I did my internship (unpaid, of course) and traveled up and down the West Coast.  Over the past few weeks, I noticed that he was particularly fatigued and that when I petted him, I could feel his hips and shoulders and spine much more than I should be able to.

I have worked with animals for a long time.  I know what cancer looks like in an old dog.  So, I bit the bullet and took him to a local vet.  After an exam, bloodwork, x-rays, and an extensive ultrasound, we found it.  A mass on his spleen.

Now, because Henry is a rescue dog, we don’t actually know how old he is.  He was estimated to be 3 when I got him, which would make him 11 in December, but it’s quite possible that he’s older.  We just don’t know.

So, my options were to do surgery or to watch it.  If the mass is benign, it can still rupture, which would cause his to bleed out internally.  If the mass is malignant, it will spread.  If I do surgery, I risk him crashing on the table or never coming out of the anesthesia.  I’m very sorry to say that in my many years working at a veterinary hospital, I’ve seen all of these things happen.

I feel like I’m in a no win situation.

After consulting with my vet back home, whom I’ve known for ages and who knows Henry and his history, we decided that the best course of action is the surgery.  It’s really his only shot, and I owe him that.  I love him more than anything in the world.