Farewell, Luci!

Our beloved Luci died on April 11, 2008. She was so cherished by our family.
She is the dog that got us involved in rescue and she was just the most devoted dog and so good with the foster puppies.

Luci was an extremely happy and active girl for the first two and half to three years we had her, but she had been struggling with kidney disease for about 6 months prior to her death and she had been steadily declining. They had ruled out lepto and some other possible causes for her kidney failure and were pretty much down to "crappy genes". At her second to last visit to the vet two days before she died, she weighed only 27.4 lbs, down from 43 lbs. six months previous, in spite of special diets including yummy commercial raw diets that the other dogs went nuts for. She hadn't eaten her meals for a week, though she would take some special treats if I hand feed them. She vomited often, had diarrhea often (fecals always negative), her teeth were horrible (unbelievably bad for a 3 year old who got regular teeth brushing and dental treats!), and she had been too weak to attend her weekly playdates at Taurus for the last 6 weeks before she died. Her creatinine level was over 7.5, normal range for a canine is 0.4 - 1.4.

At the vet on April 9, 2008 (the 4th one we've been to in our attempt to help Luci) they gave Luci some shots designed to sort of help her feel a bit better and possibly increase her appetite. But they were clear that this was now "end stage" renal disease for poor Luci. They let us know it was a definite possibility that she may suffer a very steep decline in the next week or so. But there was also a possibility that the shots might help her enough that she could feel better and hang on for a few months with us giving her more special food and taking the shots periodically. But the vet warned us that if she got much worse he would recommend euthanasia to prevent more suffering since she was basically starving herself to death at that point and feeling nausea and pain all the time. Sadly, she did decline even further over the next 48 hours. She could not walk or even keep water down. With her suffering so obvious and her prognosis so hopeless, we carried her to the vet to have her euthanized on April 11, 2008.

She remained a devoted companion until the end, following me around when I change rooms and laying at my feet always-- even in the bathroom!-- until she could not drag herself along that last day. Just days before her death she did a few Aussie waggles for the vet and showed them her hand-signal obedience. We miss her constantly, her time with us much too short.

We plan to foster another special needs puppy to honor Luci's memory.