Lucy

I'm like any other pet owner. If it's my dog that's not right, I can panic as well as anyone, thank you very much.

The problem is that I don't know if Lucy's sick; she feels fine and acts fine, but she has some blood parameters that are too high and I can't determine the cause. Dachshunds have a higher PCV anyway, so it could be normal. But my state of anxiety over her this week just underlines how special this scruffy little thing has become to me.

She was rushed in as an emergency to a clinic where I was working in January, 2002. She was in labor and a puppy was stuck in the birth canal. The owners couldn't afford a c-section, so we sedated her and gradually worked the puppy out with a lot of difficulty. My assistant tried to revive the puppy for fifteen minutes but it was no use. I could feel one more, so I gave her some oxytocin and she delivered the second puppy with no problems. She was so cute I was already wondering if they had a home for the puppy, but it turned out neither of them had a home. The person who brought her in worked at an animal shelter and couldn't bear to put her down when her time was up, so she took her home to place her herself. She already had a dozen dogs, so she was more than happy to give both of them up. Not that it would have been a problem; several at the clinic would have taken her if I didn't!

So now she and Abby have been part of our family for four years and I'm sold on little dogs. Since I have no idea how old Lucy is, it's always worried me that she might be older than I estimated. When I looked at the differential for her that I wrote on her chart and read "heart disease" and "carcinoma," I was in tears. So far, though, all her other tests have been normal, so right now I'm taking a wait-and-see approach. And realizing how lucky we are to have them both.