kennels. However... I ended up back there, and passed a beautiful little girl.... and I ended up adopting her. As I was filling out the forms I could here the most mournful howling from the back. I asked if there was an injured dog, the woman said that it was the mother of my new baby, and she missed her puppies.....so then I had two new dogs. Aurora the baby, and Taga the mommy. The other four puppies were no longer in the pound. In two days time I got a call from the pound, two more puppies from the litter aad just been brought back in. They had been in foster care, but they couldn't keep them .....so then I had four new dogs. The latest were little boys, Phantom and Buster. We had a wonderful family reunion, they were so happy to see each other.
AGE AT TIME OF SURGERY: 3 1/2 MONTHS
DATE OF SURGERY: OCTOBER 15, 1997
TYPE OF SURGERY: DOUBLE TIE BACK
OWNER: JENNIFER CONNOR
EMAIL: 8jwec@qlink.queensu.ca
But were they devils. They got into everything. "Where are the PUPPIES?! They were just HERE!" became a common cry at my home. One day they ate all the sofa cushions (six of them) in the space of 15 minutes. And did they love drywall. Takes less than five minutes to eat through to the insulation apparently. And plants didn't stand a chance. Then they started working on eating the floor. And one of the little miters figured out how to open the fridge door. But we loved them.
On October 13, 1997 Buster collapsed on the floor, gasping for air. He was 3 1/2 months old. It was 9 o'clock at night, and we rushed him to the emergency clinic. We got to the vets office 10 minutes before the vet did and held Buster in the car as he fought to keep breathing. The vet finally came, and before opening the door told us that it didn't look good. Buster was there for two hours with an oxygen mask over his little muzzle. The vet told us that he probably had worms in his lungs. Buster was sent home, and slept the entire next day. On October 14 he had another attack. The vet on call was Dr. Walsh at the Rossmore Animal Hospital. He recognized what Buster had as Laryngeal Paralysis and told us that if Buster made it through the night, he would perform the surgery the next morning. Buster survived the night, and had the surgery the next day. He came home and lazed in bed for a week. He had trouble eating, so we made him chicken soup, and other yummy stuff. In retrospect, it was pretty funny, a family of vegetarians trying to figure out the best way to prepare food that we had never cooked before just for him.
He is our very special little boy, and does he ever know it. He still asks for his boost onto the bed, and he demands that his light be off by at 11 o'clock, at the very latest, or he lies down with his paws over his eyes. He knows he can get what he wants by simply letting out a little cough, it works every time.
Two months after the surgery, the family who had adopted one of the other puppies from Buster's litter brought him back to the pound. Well we named him Frosty, and we now had all but one of the litter. Three months later, the last guy came back to the pound, so we ended up with all of them. We named him Cosmo. They all recognized each other, I think. They love to play together and they know that Buster is special and are never too rough with him. Which
isn't to say that Buster isn't rough with them. Sometimes Buster can be a tiny bit of a bully,
but in a very cute way.
Although LP is usually found in older dogs there is a small handfull of breeds (the Siberian Husky included) that can have a congenital form in puppyhood. I am happy to say that no one else in the family has shown any signs of it.
Photo taken 8 months post-op
