Poor Piper

We adopted our newest family member, Piper, a little less than a year ago from Take Me Home Pet Rescue. She was born in January of 2012 but didn't come to live with our family until last Halloween.

On Monday night we noticed Piper wasn't interested in her food. Tuesday morning she still wasn't interested in food and she seemed really lethargic. That morning Piper rode with me to drop off the kids at school so I could then take her to the vet.

The twins were really concerned about Piper being sick and interested in what the puppy doctor would do to help her. They wanted to go with me to take Piper to the vet, but I convinced them I'd take a picture for them instead.

Since Piper is our little rascal and chews on everything, we thought she might have eaten a toy. Either that, or perhaps she'd gotten too much people food at the twins' Pirate birthday party the previous Saturday. The X-ray didn't turn up anything so I brought Piper home with an antibiotic and instructions to keep an eye on her.

We watched Piper carefully that Tuesday evening. I showed the kids the picture of the puppy doctor and they were not impressed since they took me literally and thought there would be a "puppy" doctor. Honestly, I'd be disappointed if I'd expected a dog with a stethoscope checking Piper too.

The next morning Piper was still not eating and not herself, so we took her back to vet and started to get nervous. They discovered she was anemic, which means she has a reduced number of red blood cells (normal is 40% packed cell volume and Piper was at 20% PCV) Anemia for Piper is the result of some other disease process that we've being trying to figure out.

For the rest of the week she spent the days at East Dallas Veterinary Clinic for drug therapy and tests and then would come home to be with us in the evening. A fecal exam and blood parasites tests were negative. I really thought she'd eaten something crazy at the birthday party but a pancreatic test came back negative. We're still not sure what's causing the anemia.

For the weekend we had to move her to the Animal Diagnostic Clinic which is more of an animal hospital. She's had a blood transfusion which made her feel much better, but it's only a short-term fix. We still need to find out what's causing the anemia and how to treat it.

The kids understand Piper is sick and at the doctor. At this point they seem fine. For Carl and I it's causing a bit more of depression. 

We hope to learn more soon and that it is something we can treat.

I cannot thank the folks at East Dallas Veterinary Clinic enough. They have been so amazing and caring, I'm so glad they've been our partner in this process.