Fanny

4-4-07 SHORT HILLS: It is a stormy, rainy, cold, windy, dark and gloomy day. Fanny died this morning. Yesterday we were awakened by her crying and found her stuck behind a chair unable to stand. She crawled outside using only her front legs. The day before, she was fine and did a hospice visit to Beth Israel in Newark. Our vet, Norman, confirmed the neurological deficit and sent us to the animal neurologists down the shore. After preliminary testing, while we drove around a seedy and grimy Asbury Park, she went for x-rays and ultrasounds and an MRI while we came home to the other dogs.

At about six pm the neurologist called to report a large plaque compressing her spinal cord from the thoracic to the lumbar regions. We agreed to a biopsy of the lesion in hope of finding something treatable. The report at ten pm was necrotic fat and blood, and she was treated with corticosteroids and antibiotics in the faint hope of improvement.

At ten am she was worse, and we took the other three dogs with us and went back to be with her for the euthanasia. She was awake and pain free, from morphine. We spent a few minutes with her beforehand and showed her to the other dogs afterward so they would understand why she wasn’t coming home.

Fanny was the alpha of our little pack. I called her St. Frances because she was such an accomplished therapy dog. She was a favorite of the Newark kids she visited with Judy and had been nominated as AKC Therapy Dog of the Year. She and Judy were recognized for their work after 9/11 at the Family Assistance Center and both received many awards.

Fanny