Mattie's Sick and Our Heart's Are Hurting with Hers

I love my babies and now the last of these three is sick.  This is probably the worst picture of my babies.  They all look so raggedy but it was the only one I could find of them all together.  The black cat above is booger.  Mattie who is in the middle is an Affenpinscher.  They are called monkey dogs or monkey face because they like to monkey around and because the hair around their face normally make them have a monkey look.  (This photo doesn't show it), and the black dog on the right is Tess.  She was the best baby and completely blind by the time she died which was approximately 5 years ago at 16-17 years old.  Booger just died a few months back.  I found him as a feral cat in our shed and though it took years he finally became a very loving pet, independent but loving. He was 10 years old when he died.


I took Mattie to the vet today because she has cold like symptoms.  They gave her antibiotics but also tested for heart worms and such.  The test came back positive.  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  I wasn't expecting that, even though I had told Neil I was worried with her cough, that it my be heart worms.  

Before the vet did the test she listened with the stethoscope and say her heart sounds good.  So you can imagine my shock when she came back saying the test was positive.  I just couldn't comprehend what she was telling me, the options, I finally asked her to write it down so I could say something to Neil when I got home.  I wasn't absorbing the words.  I just looked up the breed and it's vital statistics.  This is what I found.

Mortality

A small sample of affenpinschers in a UK survey had a median lifespan of 11.4 years,  which is a typical lifespan for a purebred dog, but a bit lower than most breeds of their size.  The most common causes of death were old age (24%), urologic (19%), and "combinations" (14%).  Some are prone to fractures, slipped stifle, pda, open fontanel and respiratory problems in hot weather.

Morbidity

The affenpinscher is prone to hip dysplasia. As with many small breeds of dog they are prone to collapsed trachea. Cataracts are occasionally reported.

Just last week the vet told us that Mattie had cataracts.  Something, we already knew.  We had been noticing that her sight was failing.  In the last 2 weeks, I had been telling Neil that I could hear her little hips and bones pop.  She doesn't even jump on the couch anymore.

It's just the 3 babies above, are our babies. 
Our real babies.  I'm incredibly sad.


We still have the 2 cats below.  Pumpkin's okay but not attached to us like Mattie is.  Mattie loves us and shows it just as Tess & Boogie did.  Pumpkin was MIL's cat who is now our cat, who we took to the vet with Mattie last week because he got out and got in a fight and had a fever an infected ear that had to be lanced and drained.  $240.00 last week for them.  Another $75.00 today.  This is when I wish that I had throw away money.  You know the Donald Trump kind of money.  I certainly wouldn't consider it throw away on my babies but right now we don't have a cent to spare much less a thousand dollars to treat Mattie.

And Blackie now lives in the house but she still won't let us touch her.  She does love Pumpkin to death and drives him insane.  He's fixed, she's not.  She's interested and he's not.  Isn't that typical.

Well I'm heading to bed and hope somehow tomorrow (today) feels brighter.  Thanks for letting me get this out.
Hugs to y'all.......Tracy