Worrying about Sophie

 

Sophie is having what I guess you’d call a diabetic crisis—so I am having an emotional crisis. Over the weekend, we caught her eating some odd things—like my rattail comb, a baseball card picture of one grandson, and so on. Jordan said, “She’s hungry”; Christian said, “She’s bored.” Turns out Jordan was right.

Last night I had to get up twice to refill her water, which is unusual. When she went out at five in the morning, she was gone twenty minutes or more, and I couldn’t find her. Was about to call Christian when she stuck her head in the door. She has breakfast in two servings—a complicated story because of her insulin shot. But this morning, she did not lick the bowl clean as usual with her first breakfast and did not eat her second at all. Christian was taking Cricket to the vet, so he described the symptoms, and the vet said her blood sugar is high. She needs to eat and have insulin.

This evening we tried everything to get her to eat—pouring broth over her dog food, grating cheese and dropping it on the floor with an “Oh, oh” (which is what we do when we’re working with cheese—it usually delights her), and, finally, putting dog food and broth in a blender and using a syringe to force feed. Worked pretty well—until she went outside and threw it all up. Per vet instruction, we gave her a half dose of insulin. Both Sophie and I would be lost without Jordan and Christian to manage all this.

So tonight, lethargic is a mild description of her condition. Poor thing apparently feels awful, so first thing in the morning I’ll call the vet. I anticipate we’ll take her in, they’ll feed her through an IV (there goes the fur on one leg), and give her insulin. I pray they can do it without keeping her overnight.

Christian put our feelings into words tonight when he said, “I didn’t realize how fragile her health is.” Now that I look back, I should have seen more warning signs—whereas she usually ate anything you gave her, she scorned her dry kibble for several days. One day I put broth on it and she ate it heartily, but now she won’t even do that. And canned food? She was ravenous. It’s such a sudden change.

Being a pet parent has a lot in common with parenting a child—that feeling of helplessness when you want so desperately to make them feel better, can’t make them understand how to help, and don’t know what else to do.

Nothing else on my mind tonight. Tomorrow, I hope, a more cheery report.