Our Dog Zoie

Today was a very bittersweet day for our family. Avery and I were able to come home from the hospital. It has felt good to be home, and Avery is such a good baby. Unfortunately, we were also forced to make a very hard decision for our dog, Zoie today. Apparently she started to have some pretty intense seizures last night around 10pm and then every 2 hours after that. Needless to say, Daniel didn't get any sleep last night and was very worried about poor Zoie. Daniel also said that she would become very disoriented and also aggressive, which freaked him out a bit since Zoie has always been a VERY docile dog. He would get her calmed down after the seizure, clean her up, and by the time he would fall asleep again, she'd be up having another one. So sad. He took her to the vet early this morning where they kept her to run some tests and get her injected with enough meds to stop the seizures. He then came to the hospital to pick up Avery and I, and then we had a very serious discussion. It has been just over a year since we had to make this same sad, and hard decision about Perci, and it wasn't any easier this time around. It boiled down to the fact that we do love Zoie, but the safety of our children takes first priority. Whatever Zoie was sick with (most likely a brain tumor), would have overpowered any seizure medication we would have put her on, and we were concerned what would happen if she had a seizure when one of the kids were around. Daniel said she was a completely different dog during and after the seizures, and was afraid for the safety of the kids. So today we said good-bye to our dog Zoie, and told her to tell Perci hello for us. Maybe they are even playing one of their competitive games of fetch together in Doggie Heaven.

It is already a strange feeling to be a dogless house. Daniel and I have had dogs our whole marriage. I think Daniel even has the "I need another dog" bug, already, but I told him he'd just have to wait. A new baby is plenty to deal with right now. We are also down to one rabbit. Last week when Daniel left for work he caught a fox who had gotten into the rabbit hutch somehow and had the white rabbit in his mouth. Daniel startled him, and he must have bit down because he ran off with the head, and left the body. So Daniel did a quick burial so that Alicia wouldn't be traumatized when she went out to take care of the rabbits a little bit later. Alicia was pretty sad, but dealt with it really well. Hopefully this will be the end of our sad pet stories for a while.