Bella's Journey

Bella is my Bloodhound. We rescued her from a no kill shelter in Norman, OK in August of 2009. My husband had always wanted a bloodhound… I wasn’t too sure I really wanted another dog. I had lost my BEST canine buddy a few months back, and really didn’t want to get close to another because it was so painful to loose Riley. I think my husband wanted somehow to get a new dog for me? We already have a Husky/German Shepard Mix that is 11, maybe he thought Lukie needed another friend. So along came Bella. 50 lbs of pure dopey dog. She chewed up everything.. OMG.. I didn’t know what to do with this dog.. she kept escaping our yard…just trouble with a capital T. Except my kids loved her. I have 4 children at that time they were 10, 9, 7 and 4. Bella especially liked my 4 year old son… and he liked her. She would chase him down the hall grabbing the back of his shorts and tugging on them.. while his laughter echoed through the house… she has always been very gentle with them… I was impressed.  Soon she figured out she belonged with us. Then about September 2010, I noticed her barely limping. I just thought she might have a sticker in her foot but could never find anything… and she wouldn’t limp all the time.  She would occasionally get out so I thought maybe she caught her leg or foot on the fence.  She’s also VERY clumsy..so I just figured it was par for the course.  But as the limp increased, I took her in October to see the vet and asked about the limping. They thought that it might be a torn crutiate? (don’t know if I spelled that right). How much is that going to cost I wondered? (since this dopey dog had been quite the high maintenance dog so far). $2000.00? what? We don’t have that kind of money! So we treated it with pain meds and it progressively got worse. We tried to set back money but it never amounted to much, we had Christmas and that didn’t help either. This last February I finally just said screw it, she wasn’t eating well and she laid around all the time.. it was obvious she didn’t feel well… her knee was swelling more….. I had to do something and I knew we were getting Tax money back. So I took her to a doctor that took a special interest in orthopedics, although he is not board certified, he came highly recommended and fit better into our price range for the surgery we thought she needed.  After he did xrays he said… good news.. you are not going to need surgery for Bella. YAY! (so I thought) We decided it could be 3 things…1. a break that never healed right and has become infected.  2.  a fungal infection or 3.  possibly cancer.. but that was a remote possibility she’s so young….. so we decided to treat it as thought it was a break that had become infected. We began a treatment of Clavamox and with in days I noticed a difference in how she was acting and how much she was eating. It was looking promising. The “old” Vet that had referred me to this “new” Vet. strongly felt like I should have a biopsy done. We were able to come up with the money (thank goodness for early tax return) and did it.  The results came back inconclusive. CRAP! That’s alot of money to spend and not get more concrete results. So we kept giving her the Clavamox x 6 weeks. Between the 5th & 6th week she started to not eat as much and slow down again…then on the last few days of the 6 week Antibiotic her knee began to swell up even more than before..  with in 4 days it was huge and she was not moving much.. it was bad.! I took her on Tuesday the 12th and he said.. with as much problems as she’s having we need to amputate…..or even worse consider euthanizing.  I left her there that night for Amputation.