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Maddy
Baker
St. Bit o'Beryl, CGC, TDI
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...is
gone. She made her 7th birthday but just barely. April
1995 to May 2002 was not a long enough time.
She
had neurological problems. Sudden Onset Aggression, commonly
called "Rage", caused by partial complex frontal lobe
seizures. She had a genetically bad heart. She had a
Grade II murmur as a puppy which never got any worse. When she
fainted in January 2002, we consulted a canine cardiologist and had
an echocardiogram done. When we discovered how many things
were wrong with that valiant heart, we knew it was to be
"when" and not "if". I asked her
cardiologist for an estimate of how long we might share our lives.
Her response was, "Most dogs with conditions of the severity of
hers do not live past five." Oh.
I
do believe she could have lived a longer time had she not had the
"rage" attacks. She'd come out of a sound sleep in
full-bore attack mode. And she'd faint when she did that.
We had doubled her Prozac after a telephone consultation with her
specialist vet, Dr. Nicholas Dodman of The
Dog Who Loved Too Much
renown. But when she fainted on that final day, she couldn't
get back up. We were with her and held her and petted her and
told her that we loved her. After giving it her very best
shot, she quietly slipped away. A whisper, not a whimper, just
a sigh and she was gone.
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