by Tricia O'Neal
My name is Tricia. I am 28 years old with 2 children (Jacob who is 3 and Abby who is 14 months). I have been married to James for 4 years. We live in Michigan near Grand Rapids. I am new to PSG. I have never shown my poodles nor do I have plans to. But I absolutely love standard poodles. I have been raised with standards in my home.
I have had 4 standard poodles in my life. My parents bought our first one when I was 7 years old. His name was Bromley and he was black. Unfortunately, he was hit and killed by a car when he was just 4 years old. Our second standard was also black. We adopted him shortly after Bromley died. His name was Colby. He died of metastasized liver cancer when he was 10 years old. 2 months after his death we adopted Molson, a cream standard with a small tinge of apricot on his ears. He is a gorgeous dog and so good. He is now 7 years old but acts 2!!! He is full of life and so very smart. He is also HUGE!!! He is 28 inches high at his shoulder. Hes our big horse! J He is my parents dog.
My husband and I have wanted a standard since we were married 4 years ago. But we wanted to establish our human family first. Now that we have kids and they are not infants we decided 6 weeks ago to adopt a brown female named Katie. She was beautiful!!! So smart and fit into the family just perfect. She was just 11 weeks when we brought her home.
I had called the breeder back in September because I had heard that she had a litter due in October. I wanted to find out if she expected this litter to grow up to be as big as Molson we really want our standard to be 22-24 inches high at the shoulder. And I had some other questions for her. Upon calling her she said she just so happened to have brown female right then and there that she was looking to place in a home. I told her we werent quite ready yet especially financially but she said she was willing to work with us. She finally talked me into coming to see her so the next night we went to see Katie and immediately fell in love. We paid the breeder $300 in cash and gave her 5 $100 post dated checks for her to cash over the next 5 months for a total of $800. Things were going great with Katie. She was great with the kids and training very well. She was a timid dog and had occasional panic-pee but overall she was just eager to please.
Well she met her fate on Halloween day. I was letting her out just before taking the kids to a Halloween event. On her way back in she suddenly started hacking I stood there and watched her expecting her to cough up whatever she was apparently choking on. After a few seconds of this coughing and dry heaving she passed out. I ran up to her and performed the Heimlich on her. She then came to only to continue having difficulty breathing and she passed out 2 more times and she was bleeding from her mouth I ran frantically over to the neighbors begging for help. The neighbor told me to rush her to the vet and she also called the vet to give her a heads up that we were on our way.
The vet looked her over and initially thought it was a heart attack or an anaphylactic reaction. She told us to take our kids trick or treating and to call her in an hour when they would know more it was sooo difficult to leave her but I had to for the kids sake. After an hour I returned to the vet and Katie looked just horrible. Her nose was dry and she could hardly breath. She kept looking at me like I hurt cant you help me?. The vet said when I arrived, Katie perked up and seemed so excited to see me. The vet said she still couldnt pinpoint what the heck was going on. She did x-rays and nothing foreign showed up the only thing apparent was that her lungs were full of fluid. The vet had given her diuretics but that didnt seem to help. The vet said she was going to bring her to her house that night to keep an eye on her. She was also going to have pain meds on hand as well as euthanasia if it came to that. She said she would call if anything changed. The vet said she gave Katie a 20% chance of making through the night. I wanted to bring her home so bad but I knew it was selfish and unrealistic. She had to be with someone trained to help her. It was soooooooo hard to leave my Katie. I cried buckets
We awakened Saturday morning (Novmeber 1) to the phone ringing. It was the vet calling to say she had to euthanize Katie around 11 the night before. She and her dad (whos been a vet for 40 years) did an autopsy on Katie they found her kidneys and lungs to be filled with blood. They and on other vet concurred that she had blown an aneurysm in her lungs. There was nothing that could have been done even surgery prior to her death would not have saved her.
I am still so sad. The breeder is a reputable breeder my parents actually bought Molson from her. But she is so brusque. I understand that shes been through the death of a dog a million times but youd think she would care more. We called her Friday night to inform her (we thought she would want to know afterall, had we not of adopted her, she was going to keep Katie as her own). We left her a message she called my husband back that night only to say she didnt have time to talk then.. but to call her back the next day. I called her back in the morning her husband answered the phone and said (very brusquely) you need to talk to her about this shes not home try back in a couple hours. Why the hell couldnt she call us at all??? Why did we have to keep calling her back??? So a couple hours later my husband tried her again answering machine. So I tried again in the afternoon She was just really short and it wasnt until the end of the phone call that she said my condolences are with you. Also, I had to bring up the money aspect of it with her. Here we are paying for a deceased dog for the next 5 months. She said she would go ahead and cash our checks and she may have another dog for us in February. I think she is going to give us a puppy but Im not sure. The litter she had due in October turned out to be a false pregnancy apparently. She just mated on of her other females (a different mom from Katie and the false pregnancy) and shell know in December if the dog is pregnant. I just feel bad that she seemed so cold towards us I understand if she does give us a puppy that she is being really nice since its not her fault the puppy died. But I am so angry at so many things right now. Im angry that she talked me into this puppy and now its dead. We are out $1200 plus dollars with nothing to show for it but broken hearts. I know you take on a financial responsibility when you buy a dog but my word we werent counting on paying for all this. And right before the Christmas season. I am angry that we wont have another dog in our house until AT LEAST February and thats if this bitch is indeed pregnant. I am angry that my best buddy died in such a painful way and now thats the vision I have in my head of her I am angry that the stupid vets office wanted to be paid right away I am angry that our breeder is so cold. I am angry that I worked so hard with Katie to get her housebroken and trained and now she is gone and I have to do it all over again. She is an award winning breeder. She has bred many show dogs. Why cant she have the personality to go with it????
We have Molson living with us right now to try and help take some of the hurt away. He is a joy to have around