Maybe I should rename this blog My Crate or Yours — lately it seems to be as much about dogs as food, and God knows I’m nuts about them both.

Last Thursday night I thought I’d have another sad dog post to write. It was late in the evening when I called the vet because Ginger, gorgeous golden dog of my heart, had what seemed to be a very bad, sudden onset urinary tract infection. She was pacing the floor, crying, trying to pee, just miserable. I wondered about bladder stones, but both vets I spoke to on the phone thought not. When Ginger started to throw up at about midnight, the second vet agreed with me that maybe I should take her up to the Indianapolis Veterinary Emergency Clinic (IVEC, a really wonderful 24-hour animal hospital about an hour north of us.)

The doctor who admitted Ginger just before 2 a.m. wasn’t optimistic. She said the dog’s bladder was completely blocked, with urine backing up into her kidneys, and given that Ginger is 11 she was unlikely to be getting bladder stones, a malady which usually strikes dogs when they are younger. She thought the blockage would probably turn out to be a mass, a neutral-sounding word which I knew really meant something terribly, unbelievably wrong with my sweet girl.

At the look on my face, which must have reflected all the pain of losing
 three beloved dogs in the last 17 months, the vet tried to backpedal. It could still be a stone, she said, and even if it wasn’t (because she didn’t want to get our hopes up) there might be surgical options and we shouldn’t think we’d necessarily have to put her to sleep right away.

Right away. Shit.

My blood was icy and my throat thick with sorrow. I could hardly get the words out to tell Jerry, who was waiting in the car with our other dog Bandon. We’ve had so much bad dog news in our house lately that there wasn’t a shred of optimism left in my bag of tricks. We left Ginger getting a catheter inserted to relieve the pressure while they ran some tests and checked into a hotel across the street to try to get some sleep until 4:30, when they thought they’d have a diagnosis. 

I just lay there, of course, trying to get my head around a world without Ginger in it. This girl is a part of my fiber, a happy, gutsy, bossy dog full of confidence and chutzpah, funny and fearless (except when confronted by a thunderstorm or a clothes drier.) I love her and I need her and I didn’t want to say good bye. Not ever; certainly not now.

But sometimes luck smiles. My cell phone rang at 4:00 and it was the vet although I barely recognized her surprised and
laughing voice. “Good news,” she said. “She’s full of stones.” “Define full,” I said, already crying. “Full” she repeated, “as in twenty plus,” an open ended number that eventually turned out to be a little bigger.

Fifty freaking bladder stones – apparently Ginger’s been stockpiling them for years. Her bladder looked like a sack of marbles in the x-ray. And she did, indeed, have the mother of all urinary tract infections. So they flooded her with antibiotics and fluids and got her stabilized and yesterday they operated and got out every one of those pesky stones and tonight or tomorrow we bring her home.

Halleluiah and happy day! And thank you everyone at IVEC for saving our girl!