
April 20, 2024 Finn had been suffering for a full day from what I thought was constipation. I’d treated him with a TTouch technique used for colicky horses that has been successful for him over the too few years that he and I were together. But not this time.
Throughout the day he’d been drinking water, so I continued to apply the TTouch and monitor him. By the time he showed me that he was in trouble, and I realized this wasn’t just another instance of constipation, he’d become severly dehydrated and his heart was slowing. The vet said he would not have survived the night.
Because he’d been diagnosed with Dilated Cardio Myopathy (DCM) 10 months earlier, the vet said that they weren’t able to rehydrate him quickly as they would normally do. As Finn marched toward death’s door we scrambled to determine the cause and a treatment.
It turned out that he had a blockage of long grass that had become tightly woven into a log shape lodged in his duodenum, elongating it and somehow preventing the fluids that Finn had been drinking from getting into his system.
The vet was unsure if they could help him at all, and wouldn’t know without surgery. Then, if they could help him and had to remove part of his intestines there was a chance that there would not be enough intestines left to reconnect them. If there were enough to reconnect – there was a chance that the connected area would, “blow out”. Which would be fatal. So many ifs.
Finn was suffering. And the prognosis meant so much more suffering.
Just 10 months prior he’d had surgery – amputation of a shattered tow. Wearing the cone for 6 weeks had proven to be too much for him. It was as though he’d become deaf and blind. Consumed or resigned to giving up completely. I’d had to physically move him through the world, out the door, to the grass to potty. I do not have the words to adequatly describe what he became in those final weeks. Traumatized. I never wanted to put him through that again. I knew that it was likely that I’d be faced with it again. Because he has been accident prone as long as I’ve had him.
In the six short years that we were together he’d had two operations for his teeth and gums, another where he had flayed his side trying to through a wooden fence (48 stitches), another to amputate a shattered toe. And injured his neck – getting caught in a wooden fence again, etc.
I can’t write any more. My tears are flowing. I feel I failed to keep him safe. I held him in my arms as the vet administered euthenasia.
I am so sorry Finn. I miss you so, and will love you forever.