The last few days have been some of the hardest I’ve had in a long time. There has been too much death and anxiety for one person to handle. If you don’t want to hear a lot of depressing stuff about dead dogs, probably don’t read this.
Things have gone downhill at the shelter—bad. The other volunteer and I have been butting heads with the owner, because we care and are trying to make things better, and we have different ideas of how to do that. But a few days ago, things got so much worse.
Neither of myself nor the other volunteer were there in the morning—she had to take a dog to the airport, and I had to take a dog to the vet. When we got back, we had to take care of the puppies and then finally got to the clinic, and it wasn’t until the end of the day that we noticed one of the older puppies in there was breathing really heavily.
And then he got worse. We tried calling the owner, but her phone was off. We tried talking to approximately a million vets, and I even called my medical-professional parents for advice. The other volunteer was watching youtube videos to try to remind herself how to do an IV, but we have old-ass equipment. I was googling emergency pet hotlines, and we had no idea what to do.
After about an hour of freaking out (while the puppy continued to decline) I called an Uber (which took about an hour to get there) to go to a 24/7 emergency vet clinic all the way in Guatemala City. We were locked into the place, so we had to stuff the 30lb dog into a bag and hop the fence with him. During the 45 minute car ride, we pet him and tried to get him to keep breathing.
Somehow, we made it to the clinic, but it took another half hour for the doctor to arrive. They did X-rays and stuff, confirming that he had tons of fluid in his lungs, and put him on lots of stuff to try to get him better. The other volunteer asked the doctor a million questions (like about all our puppies and stuff) and he was amazing, put up with everything from us. We left the dog overnight, eventually got another Uber, and made our way back home.
I’m making this sound like kind of whatever, but it was actually one of the worst, most horrible nights ever. We were locked into this place with a dying dog and zero resources. No phone numbers of vets. No key to get out. Nothing. And we were just supposed to let it happen, I guess. I know we made the right decision by getting him to the capital, but it shouldn’t have been such an ordeal. We are here to help the animals, to save them. I know we can’t save them all, but this guy should have had a chance.
I thought this was one of the worst days ever. Until the next day. We had barely slept the night before, and two of our puppies (which we had been neglecting while in Guatemala City) weren’t doing well now. One of them had started seizing, and the other wasn’t breathing well. By the time the other volunteer decided that she was going to just take them both to the vet again, the one puppy couldn’t stop seizing. It was awful and endless. And the other one could barely breathe. I stayed home to take care of stuff, while she went to the same vet as the night before. While she was in the car, she got a call that the puppy from the night before had died. Not long after that, stuck in traffic, the seizing puppy died in her arms.
We knew there was a chance it was distemper, because seizures and drooling are a sign of that, so meanwhile, I’m going crazy cleaning what I can in the clinic, trying to prevent it spreading to any other animals. I’m also administering meds that normally the other girl does, and trying not to burst into tears every few minutes. The vet did help the one living pup, and told us that the seizing was most likely from toxicity from deworming her. Basically, these puppies aren’t from the best situations, and don’t necessarily have good immunity from their mothers. And when we don’t give them really good food, they have no chance to build that immunity. So that toxicity SHOULDN’T have killed her, but it did. Dogs SHOULDN’T get pneumonia (which this puppy had, along with the one that already died) but they did because they don’t have normal immunity. There is also a chance that these two were showing signs of distemper, but as they had no other symptoms, it is likely just pneumonia.
So my amazing other volunteer friend then spent the next MULTIPLE hours in an Uber with two dead dogs getting good food and medicine they need and a whole bunch of stuff. Meanwhile, I’m cleaning and taking care of the five remaining pups and forgetting to eat and worrying and upset and being in the middle of head-butting, and by the time she gets back at like 6, I’m ready to puke everywhere. Which I did after I helped her take care of the one puppy. And then i knew that I had to get out of there.
I left the next morning. It’s hard to even describe how I was feeling—just so in the middle of things, frustration that we aren’t being trusted with the responsibilities we are being given, being told we’re doing the wrong thing all the time, being told not to be emotional, getting in trouble for using a washing machine, having these amazing puppies die…I was so sick over it, and not being helpful. So I went to Antigua for the day, and did NOTHING. My stomach was still completely in knots, so I watched essentially an entire season of Brooklyn 99 and tried to distract myself. It only kind of helped.
This morning, I woke up to learn that two more puppies had died—not from our house, two in the clinic that were nursing. There’s one left in the litter, and I have a feeling she won’t make it either. I was considering not going back to the shelter, or taking more time off…but that snapped me out of it. My friend needs me there. The dogs need me there. So I’m going back tomorrow. Today, I worked on importing old outdated database stuff into spreadsheets that people can actually access, and spent a buttload of money shopping for things we need at the shelter.
And then, I found out that another one of our house puppies had to be put down because she had distemper. We are down to four. This was the thing I was praying would not happen, because distemper is incredibly contagious and dangerous, especially to those with compromised immune systems, like puppies. Most of the dogs in the shelter are immunized, but not all of them. I’ve prepared myself for the very likely possibility that all of our babies will have to be put down. It’s awful, but there’s nothing I can do, and I’m trying so so so hard not to be sick over it because it’s something I can’t change. All I can do is boost their immune systems as much as I can with healthy food, and play with them and love them no matter what. Their lives might be really short, but there’s still hope. And if they do have to die too young, at least I can make them the happiest little puppies I can while they’re still here. That’s all I can do.
I’m so sad.