# Dog was paralyzed, bladder infection, but did I make the right decision?



## ocrage (Oct 8, 2010)

Hey guys, today's been a really rough day. Let me just cut right to the chase. 

So sunday night my dog (~5 year old unknown terrier mix(think its jack russel plus cairn terrier or something like that) starts to act a little "off" so to say, after a good day actually (she walked around the park with my mom which doesn't happen all too often and she loves to walk) and overall just a pretty good day. then monday we notice she's still not acting right, doesn't want to move around much and is pretty much just laying in her bed. then tuesday rolls around and when I come home from work I'm told she can't walk/stand on her back legs. i do some googleing and since we couldn't afford to go to a vet at the time we just gave her some low dose aspirin. wednesday comes and shes no better at all, completely lost her back legs and is just looking miserable. today comes and shes worse, she lost control of her bladder and starts peeing randomly everywhere which leads to her starting to pee blood around noon or so, and is just constantly whining in pain with a terrible look in her eyes. i call my mom and tell her we have to get her to the vet, so we finally we able to get some money and head over there and when we get there, the vet instantly tells us pretty much that she knows she has a bad bladder infection, she checks out her legs and says that her legs are completely paralyzed. she then says that she see's stuff like this all of the time and that it happens out of no where to young dogs. she said that she would never walk again, or had an extremely rare chance of walking again and that the bladder infection wouldn't go away. so we were told we pretty much had to make a decision to either keep her alive with her paralyzed and having to empty her bladder for her (which would be hard seeing as both my mom and I work full time) with her having constant bladder infections, and her being constantly depressed due to the fact she was a really active dog that loved to jump from bed to bed, or to put her out of her "misery".

now, I did some more research on bladder infections and paralysis and I'm seeing that both are pretty common, with bladder infections being fairly easy to cure and the paralysis having a ~70% chance of getting better. is this right? did i do some horrible thing by putting down my baby dog to sleep? i feel so terrible i just need to know i did the right thing.

also, i should mention she didn't have the greatest history. she had siezures, and a skin disease for a while. 

oh, and the doctor said a stroke/seizure might have kicked off the paralysis which caused the other stuff.

and, do you guys think that if we would have taken her to the vet tuesday we could have saved her? although i dont know what they could have done differently...

thanks


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## spotted nikes (Feb 7, 2008)

Please don't take this harshly, as I think you are not the responsible adult in charge of the dog, so I'm not meaning this to be accusatory to you, but I think that you did the right thing having her euthanized, but would add that you might not want to get another dog until you are in a position financially to provide vet care when needed. The dog was not looking right on Sunday night but didn't get seen by a vet until Thursday. That poor dog suffered for 4 days. The dog should have gone to the vet Monday. they may or may not have been able to save her, but she at least would not have suffered. Have you ever had a bladder infection? Do you know how painful they are, and how painful they would have to be to be peeing blood? 

Please, Please, do not get another pet until you/your family has the financial means to provide vet care as soon as it is needed. As I said, I'm not blaming you, since you had to get your mom's permission to take her to a vet. But if your family wants another one now, please try to discourage them. If you really want a dog, see if you can foster for a rescue that pays for the foster dog's vet bills while you have it. It might be a better situation for you.

I'm so sorry for your loss. I know it is awful to have second thoughts about whether the euth was the right thing, but I believe that if your vet was suggesting it, then it truly was. At least the dog is no longer in pain.


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## ocrage (Oct 8, 2010)

I understand where you are coming from, but we are more then fit to have animals. this is our 2nd dog, currently still have a 14 year old cairn terrier thats doing fine. the whole money situation happened because my mom recently lost her job and we have been struggling to make rent/pay bills these last couple of months. when we got this pup we had more then enough means to support her. and we both wanted to take her to the vet from monday, but like i said, we had no money seeing as it would cost at least 200-300$ to get it done and even that much was really hard to come up with.

I am also 20 with a recently acquired full time job after being in school full time for the past 18 years. it was just extremely shit luck at an extremely bad time.

like i said, i just really hope i did the right thing. that dog had so much spunk and character. its going to suck coming home and not hearing her crying in joy then making me take at least 30seconds to a minute to great her and hug her as i came home.

thanks for the reply

oh, and we're not looking for a replacement. this was our little girl. 

thanks again


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## BrittanieJo (Sep 23, 2010)

To be honest? I think had you taken her to the vet earlier yes she might have faired better. But if she had a seizure (which would be my guess, or a stroke) she probably had an underlying problem that without an mri you could have had no way of predicting. I don't think you did the wrong thing by putting her down based on the info you had at the time. I personally might have gotten a second opinion, but with what your family is going through that's probably not possible. These are all parts of being a parent to a dog you have to make the hard decisions and it sucks. I will say that my cousins had a jack russel who had something happen very similar to your little girl and they to chose to put her down after trying two months to get her back on track. It didn't happen even with my aunt doing puppy therapy and being home 24/7. The vet said at the time that pure bred dogs run into these problems more often than mutts, just one persons opinion and all.


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## ocrage (Oct 8, 2010)

first of all, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to reply.

but yeah, she has had seizures before (some were pretty bad imo) and she has had a history of skin disease and stuff like that so she was never the healthiest dog, and who knows what happened to her before I rescued her. she was definitely damaged 
and yeah, even if we wanted to take her to get a second opinion or even do some most in depth tests we unfortunetly at this time wouldn't have been able to afford it without going into more debt than we already are, and unless I stopped going to work there would be no way take care of her from 9am-4pm or be with her.

it was a terrible terrible terrible situation, and the vet said that she lost complete control of her legs. she wouldnt even react when i would scratch her lower back where she LOVED to be scratched for hours.

thanks again for the responses, it really makes me feel better. I really miss her, she was always by my side whenever i was at home (which was the majority of the time) and everywhere i would look she would happen to be there. at least she doesn't have to deal with anything anymore


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