Too good to be true

I wanted to title this post "Damn it all to hell"  and that's probably the most fitting still.  Other contenders include:  "Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory"; "The best laid plans..."; "Into each life some rain must fall";  or "Mama said there'd be days like this."  Anyway, you get my drift. 

I had taken in 4 new shepherds in the past couple weeks.  All of them young, good looking, friendly, highly adoptable, destined to be short termers.  Ginger was already adopted.  I had placements for the three others lined up for next weekend.  On top of that, I had potential homes for two long-termers, Buddy and Jeremy, and was hoping and planning to move them this coming weekend.  I should have known it was too good to be true.

Monday morning Clay took the still-not-eating Ranger to the vet's office and dropped him off.  He needed a heartworm check prior to adoption and we needed to find out why he still wasn't eating.  In addition to that, he was both drinking and urinating excessively.  I had changed urine soaked bedding in his crate twice over the last couple of days.  Obviously something was going on, but the dog was still happy, playful, and except for a warm, dry nose, seemed normal.  The vet called with the news that his temperature was slightly elevated, he was dehydrated, his urine had the specific gravity of water, and some initial blood work showed abnormal kidney function.  The vet's working diagnosis is Leptosporosis. 

The definitive blood work may take a week, so we are proceeding on the assumption that it's lepto.  He came home with antibiotics and bags saline solution that I'm supposed to give him subcutaneously twice a day.  Believe it or not, that's the good news.  Lepto is treatable, we seem to have caught it early, and I expect him to make a full recovery.  He will eat treats fed to him by hand, quite eagerly actually, but he won't touch dog food, chicken and rice, canned food, or even eggs if given to him in a food dish.  He gets hand fed dog biscuits while the saline drip goes in under his skin.  I guess he's milking it for all it's worth.

The bad news is that I had to tell his prospective adopter, and the potential adopters of the other four dogs, that we need to delay the adoptions.  Even if it's not lepto, we need to make sure, and if it is, we need to make sure the other dogs haven't contracted it.  Lepto is contagious, transmitted through urine, and most of the dogs around here have been with Ranger at one time or another over the past couple weeks.  It's contagious to people too and I've been handling his urine soaked bedding over the past few days. It's also bad news for several dogs I have waiting in the wings, and for Clay who will have all these dogs to deal with when I'm out of town for 3 days next week. 

For you annoyingly optimistic silver lining types, Ranger tested negative for heartworm, lyme, and erlichia, although he did have some round worms in his stool.  Lepto is at least treatable, and I think these potential adopters will hang in there for another two weeks.  If not, we'll find others.  Still, "damn it all to hell" sums it up pretty well.