What's love got to do with it? Everything!

Our local animal shelter called one evening to tell me they had a tiny German Shepherd puppy who was unable to keep any food down. She was weak and covered with dried vomit and she stumbled when she walked. The owner had brought the sad little puppy to the shelter because he had been unable to get her to keep solid food down and unwilling to spend the money to take her to the vet to figure out what was wrong with her. The shelter was not equipped to figure out what was wrong with the little puppy but hoped not to have to euthanize her. One thing was sure, if she couldn’t keep any food down, she was going to die.

I picked the puppy up first thing the next morning and took her straight to our vet. Dr. Norman ran several tests trying to figure out was wrong with the little puppy but they were all negative so I brought her home and tried feeding her tiny amounts of food every hour. It was so frustrating! She was obviously starving and would eat a teaspoon of food ravenously, but a few minutes later, up it came. She just couldn’t fill her little tummy, and she cried with hunger. On the second morning I brought the puppy back to the vet clinic for an x-ray. Dr. Norman was usually really prompt about calling me with results so when I hadn’t heard from him two hours later I called to check in. Dr. Norman came on the line and was noticeably hesitant when he told me he hadn’t called because he wasn’t sure what to tell me. He had been completely shocked by what he saw in the x-rays. He told me he could not identify her heart, lungs or abdomen in her radiographs! I wasn’t sure how to respond. I asked what we should do next. Dr. Norman had left messages with a couple of radiologists and sent copies of the x-rays to them to see what they thought. It took another couple of hours before they finally all agreed that what they were seeing was a rare heart defect called a Persistant Right Aortic Arch. This defect had caused a secondary condition where the puppy’s esophagus had dilated so large that it was shoving all of her other organs into a corner!

So, now we knew what was wrong, but the puppy needed a very intricate heart surgery and she was far too weak to survive surgery. We determined the only way she might keep food down was to feed her liquids by syringe, while holding her body upright for 15 minutes so it could travel through the esophagus down to her stomach. So I stayed up a second night, and it worked! I fed her tiny amounts every hour, while suspending her little body from my forearm. Each time I fed her she was getting stronger and more ravenous.

We named the little puppy Imann, and called her Nonnie for short. Imann was scheduled for surgery a few days later and she was full of love and kisses for everyone at the clinic. She was finally feeling more like a normal puppy. The vets warned me that she might not survive surgery, but also, that she might never be able to eat food like a normal dog. Dr. Norman and Dr. Merrill worked together on the difficult surgery to remove the band of tissue from her tiny little aorta and didn’t tell me until hours later that during the difficult procedure she had turned blue and both lungs collapsed, causing their entire staff a great deal of anxiety and fear that they would lose her, but remarkably, she lived!

During her recovery, Imann grew increasingly hungry, but every time I tried to increase her food, she would regurgitate the entire meal. She had finally been diagnosed with Mega Esophagus, secondary to her Persistant Right Aortic Arch. I did a lot of research online and decided to try rolling little marble sized “meatballs” out of her wet food and feed them to her one at a time. They all came back up! As the food backed up in her esophagus it would cause her to build a lot of mucus so the texture of the food when it came back up was foamy and slimy and nearly impossible to clean off the floor. I know I’m painting a gruesome picture but it literally slid out of the wads of paper towels I used when I would try to pick it up! She wouldn’t just lose her meal in one regurgitation, either. I would crawl around the floor cleaning the slimy mess up and carry it outside to the garbage, and when I would come back in to the house there would be two more puddles of vomit on the floor. I would call our vet and sob with frustration and sadness. Her little eyes were sad and sallow. I could never get her to play with toys and it made me so sad. I would try over and over to feed her, and just enough food was staying down to keep her alive. I was literally watching her waste away. At 10 months old, she weighed only 16lbs and should have weighed at least 45-55lbs.

One day I came home and found a custom built Bailey Chair sitting in my driveway. The Bailey Chair was invented to help dogs with Mega Esophagus stay in an upright position for long enough for their meals to get past their esophagus. I never did find out who generously donated that chair for Imann, but it really got my hopes up. Sadly, when I tried feeding her in the Bailey Chair she projectile vomited her food halfway across the room. I was exhausted and depressed and almost broken.

We decided to try placing a feeding tube down through her nostril, to bypass her esophagus and go directly to her stomach. Our thinking was that at least we could get some weight on her while we tried to figure out how to feed her. The rubber tube was stitched to the side of her muzzle by our vet, with a wider opening at the top. I would use a syringe and push the liquefied food down the tube to her stomach, but the sensation must have been foreign to her and she would involuntarily sneeze, tearing the stitches out and blowing the tube out of her nose. Food went everywhere – except into her stomach.

Dr. Norman and I were finally to the point where we were coming to the difficult point where we had to consider euthanasia, when I suddenly decided to try grinding up puppy food in a blender, and then adding water until it made a “meat shake”. I searched and found the highest elevated food dish I could and started with one cup of shake in the dish. She lapped it up and fifteen minutes later, it was staying down. I was still guarded but so excited. I fed her another cup, and fifteen minutes later it had also stayed down. Success!! I was beside myself! I called everyone I could think of and shouted the news on their voicemails.

Weeks later we were finally on track. Imann had gained weight to 24lbs. Still far less than where she should have been for her age, but even her size and structure had been stunted by more than a year of malnourishment. She was gaining weight and looked bright eyed. Most important, she was finally starting to act like a healthy dog.

I cried when Imann picked up a toy for the first time and threw it in the air. At one-year old, she finally felt like a puppy and had decided to make up for all that lost time.

Imann took so much will and tenacity to save, but watching her run and play and kiss the other dogs makes it worth every minute.

And what’s love got to do with it? Everything.