When you have multiple dogs, one thing you quickly learn about is sibling rivalry. When Brodsky gives us a disdainful look if he thinks Kasay’s gotten a bigger treat (and vice versa), it takes me back to the days when my sister and brother and I used to count our jellybeans to make sure nobody had been slighted by the Easter bunny.
My mother wasted an unknown portion of her life counting out jellybeans (or whatever the treat du jour happened to be) and dividing by three. Now it’s our turn, except with easier math. I felt guilty about devoting an entry solely to Kasay last week. I don’t think Brodsky has a secret laptop with internet access and lurks here, but just in case…today is his turn in the spotlight.
We knew about Kasay’s health problems when we took him in, but Brodsky was supposed to be the healthy one. He was the easy one: more mature, less whiny when left alone, less destructive, fewer housebreaking accidents. Sure, his ribs were sticking out, his coat was very coarse, and he seemed extremely subdued, but we figured he’d soon gain weight and chalked the rest up to his nature.
We found Brodsky online from a different rescue organization, one that isn’t nearly as well-organized and fastidious as Crossroads, and a few days after he arrived, I noticed that he had intestinal worms. I was a bit perturbed at his rescue group for not giving us his vet records immediately and for neglecting to tell us about his condition. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise though, because when I took him to the vet for treatment, they discovered he also had heartworms, which of course can be life-threatening.
The vet began immediate treatment of the intestinal worms and scheduled a two-day stay for Brodsky to receive his heartworm treatment: two shots of a form of arsenic. The treatment itself is dangerous, but the vet felt he was in the early stages and could receive both shots at once. Apparently, in more advanced cases, the shots have to spread out over several months.
Of course we were worried about our poor guy, and in the meantime, his old vet records finally did arrive in the mail (which showed that he’d tested negative for heartworms two months prior—I later learned it’s not unusual for it to go undetected in the very early stages), along with medicine for the intestinal worms. We ending up being so thankful that Brodsky’s foster parents hadn’t brought this along when they dropped him off; otherwise, we wouldn’t have had a reason to take him into the vet right away, and we might not have discovered the heartworms until it was too late.
Brodsky responded well to his hospitalization, and within a month had put on weight, developed a much smoother and shinier coat, and shown more energy and exuberance than we’d thought he was capable of. At his six-month follow-up, he was declared heartworm-free. Here he is in all his wondrous splendor.
Before (on the left): super-skinny and not about to leap around like some other dogs we know.
Now: Smooth, shiny, chubby, chock full of vim and vigor:
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