Poor little Bobby - he’s really had the worst year ever. In March, he landed wrong jumping off the bed and broke a bone in his paw (and had to wear this ridonculous cast for weeks):

In April we went for a hike in Eastern Washington and he came home with a mysterious and rather evil-looking bite on the inside of his leg. The vet had no idea what it could be (it showed up too soon to be a tick bite, and the tick-borne disease tests the vet took later all came back negative), but sent him home with a bunch of antibiotics just in case.

Ten days later, he developed a high fever, diarrhea and vomiting, so we took him back to the vet. He had to stay overnight because of the fever and dehydration, but they had no idea what had caused it.

In June, he slipped off a log into Annette Lake and came up very grimy and green, and a couple of days later he was sick again. Same symptoms, another overnight vet trip, countless tests and no results.

After this he was healthy all summer (except for some random days when he seemed lethargic and warm), and then suddenly last week he got a high fever and a very enlarged lymph node on his neck. This time he had to stay at the vet’s for two nights, they ran all sorts of tests and x-rays and poked and prodded him all over the place, but they still have no idea what is causing all of this.

He’s back at home now (on two different antibiotics and a painkiller) and is slowly getting better, but I feel so sorry for him. I just want to find out what’s wrong so it won’t keep happening every other month. Before this year, he never had any health problems at all, but now it seems like his immune system has been compromised and any little thing (like falling into the lake) will set him off. We’ve decided to retire him from hiking, at least until we figure out what’s wrong.

I have known and loved Bobby for eight and a half years now (the little nose bear stole my heart the first time I met him, which was also the first time I met JK), and I don’t even want to think about not having him in my life.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm and is filed under The pups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.