On Friday the 10th as we were going through our regular routine of getting ready for work Yuri threw up - a lot. She took a few steps and poo’d and pee’d right on the carpet. She tried to take a few more steps and was keeping herself low to the ground and seemed very weak. Something was just not right with her. We checked her gums to see if she was pale and her gums were a very muddy brown color.

Immediately we rushed her to the emergency clinic where they put her on oxygen and fluids. They were unable to get her mean blood pressure above 77 which is somewhat low for a dog. Even with the oxygen and fluids her gum color wasn’t improving and she wasn’t any more responsive. We decided to treat her like she was having an allergic reaction to something but it didn’t make a significant difference.

About 8 hours later she was a little more alert and would at least lift her head and look around. We re-did some blood work to discover that her red blood cell count was half of what it was in the morning. Yuri was bleeding out somewhere and we didn’t know where. Ultrasound revealed that her abdomen was almost completely filled with blood. We spent the next hour trying to marshal the funds to put her through a surgery that could save her life.

After an Oxyglobin transfusion she was ready for surgery where they discovered that her liver was hemorrhaging and it was grossly infected. They ended up removing one of her liver lobes which was necrotic and severely bruised. One of the hemotoma had ruptured this morning, causing her initial symptoms.

She responded well to the surgery but spent the rest of her weekend at the emergency clinic to be on fluids and to monitor her blood levels to determine if the surgery was a success or not. Finally on Monday morning she was able to come home where we can monitor her temperature and keep an eye on her. Tuesday night she went back in because she was extremely painful from her incision and Wednesday we went to our regular vet to have more blood tests done. We were worried that some of her values pointed to either an infection or that her liver wasn’t working the way it should. Friday we had her retested and her values had returned to a more acceptable level.

Her favorite toy Coon who spent the weekend with her at the clinic came home with a little vet wrap of his own on the same leg that Yuri did from her IV. It was a day before she was feeling well enough to give him a good thrashing.

Now she is recovering well and has been feeling well enough to sass at her brother Hanzo and try to play with him in short little bursts.  Though he continues to make valiant efforts to encourage her to play with him or to at least get her riled up enough that she has no choice but to play.

We are so very lucky that we still have Yuri with us today. She will need to be on expensive medications for a long time and will always need to eat a prescription diet to help protect her liver. We still don’t know for certain the root cause of her liver disease. It could be anything from some toxicity that is still effecting her liver or some kind of vascular issue involving a shunt of some kind.

All this from a little dog who happened to throw up in the morning and just wasn’t doing right. Moral of the story is that if your dog just doesn’t seem quite right, don’t wait. Get them to a vet immediately. I can’t imagine what the end of this story would be if I would have gone to work or if she’d thrown up just ten minutes later and no one would have been there to see her.

If you have a few dollars to spare, we are taking donations to help cover the cost of Yuri’s surgery and continual care to make sure that for as long as she’s with us that she can be as healthy and happy as possible. (The medical bill alone is $3000 and climbing) Even if you can spare just $10 or $20 it would be appreciated. You can PayPal the money to boy {at} coffeestain {dot} org or send an email to the same address for our snail mail address to send checks.

Thank you so much for your time reading this. Yuri, Hanzo, Daniel and I appreciate all the support, both emotionally and financially, that we’ve gotten so far. It has been a harrowing week and we couldn’t have made it through without our family and friends.

-Sarah, Daniel, Hanzo and Yuri
(cross posted to Yuri’s blog and the other Shiba forum)