[Editor note: In January, we brought you the beginning of Cody's story. Cody is the Flat Coated Retriever who needed the liver shunt surgery to have a chance at a normal life, before being adopted by his not-yet-determined forever home. Now that the ending is known, the second half the story can be told. Stephanie Green is the founder of Milbrose Retrievers in New Hampshire. In her words, this is the second part of Cody's saga.]
I didn’t even have the puppy yet but was honored that so many people had trusted me and answered the call for donations. We didn’t know much at this point, in the middle of January, other than that Cody, like my own puppy Bing, had a liver shunt. Without surgery a liver shunt is a sure death sentence.
Cody was bred by a woman in her twenties who lived with her parents. She was in over her head. I would like to think she had the best of intentions. She could have dumped him at the shelter or not disclosed his issue to his new family but she didn’t do either of those things. I had received an email a week earlier stating that her father was saying that he would be euthanized if they couldn’t find him a home. He was peeing in the house and they did not have the finances to provide him with the special food and medication that he needed.
I had previously had a golden puppy that I had bred with a shunt and we had found a wonderful vet by the name of Dr. Chick Weisse who had performed an interventional radiology procedure on my Bing and saved his life. It didn’t seem fair that my Bing should have a chance at a normal life and Cody should not because of circumstances and money.
I had decided that I was going to get Cody no matter what. Even if he couldn’t get the surgery he needed, he would be safe.
But we did raise the money and the trip to get Cody was planned.
Victor, New York is about ten hours from my home in New Hampshire. It made for a long day, but I was able to pick him up and get him home on the same day. The plan was for him to spend the first few days at my home in New Hampshire, where we would start the process of getting him ready to go to the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan to have surgery.
The Holistic Vet Center in Concord was very kind to us and covered many of Cody’s expenses, including the same medications and herbs Bing was on. The blood work was sent to Dr. Weisse for analysis.
The plan was for him to stay at my home a couple of days, get the initial medical work done and then go to the home of another flat coat breeder. I brought Cody home and introduced him to a few of my pack of eight retrievers. He did great. The older dogs thought he was a dopey kid but they were fine with him and the younger ones thought he was a great playmate.
By the end of the first day, Cody was a new member of the pack and it was as if he had been here his entire life. We scrapped our original plan and decided that he would stay in our home. As a university professor, I only taught a couple days a week and I had been through this process before, so it seemed to make sense for him to stay.
I had been putting out feelers for a new home for Cody, and my husband and I went back and forth about whether we could keep him. He fit so well into our pack and we just adored the boy. He was affectionate and easy going. He played well with the other dogs and while he came to my house un-housebroken, he was now trustworthy. Many shunt dogs are difficult to housebreak because the kidneys are performing double duty cleansing the blood for the liver. With his herbs and vet care, Cody was now mostly housebroken.
I had heard from the newsletter editor from the Northeast Flat Coated Retriever Club asking to reprint the original article about Cody that David wrote for Pet Connection back in January. They thought it would be a good story for the members. A few days after the story was printed in the newsletter I received an email from a family not far from my home. They had read about Cody in the NEFCRC newsletter, and were anxious to see if Cody might be a good fit for them.
The issue was that Cody had some health problems that were not only serious, but also we were not fully clear on the future ramifications of these issues.
Where there is one birth defect there may be others, and we already knew about one of them. We learned that Cody has a serious heart murmur in addition to the liver shunt. How bad was the murmur? We didn’t yet know.
I explained the health issues, but Jim and Ann did not seem fazed by the information. After several hours I fell absolutely in love with them as did Cody. They were perfect. They had previous flat coat experience, they had a fenced yard, used a vet I knew, and would continue taking Cody to my holistic vet. Ann planned on cooking for him. Even better, they owned a beach house and a boat. How can anyone deny a retriever a beach house and a boat? We agreed that I would keep them posted on Cody’s upcoming health evaluations and if all went well they could consider him theirs; or shall I say Cody would consider them his!
The appointment for Cody’s surgery was set for March 21, 2011, the week of my spring break.
We drove to the Animal Medical Center on Monday morning and met with Dr. Weisse and his team. They commented about how I was a glutton for punishment after having been through this once already (I think the word actually used was “sucker”). One of the team members was a resident who was already a board certified cardiologist and was in the process of getting her certification in internal medicine as well; she was also from the Boston area, so a lucky break for us as she is a relatively local vet that we could follow up with.
The plan for the week was for Cody to have his CT scan on Monday to establish exactly where the shunt was located, and to be neutered. Then on Tuesday he would have the interventional radiology procedure and spend until Thursday in intensive care.
I was staying with a friend and our plan was to drop Cody off at the vet in the morning and then spend the day eating and shopping in New York City. On Monday afternoon while we were shopping I got a call from Dr. Weisse; the CT Scan was done and the shunt was not inside Cody’s liver.
Cody was one of the few large dogs with a shunt outside of his liver. The surgery was in some ways easier with a higher long term success rate, but considerably more invasive. He had been doing very well with just medical management and his blood work was not normal but it wasn’t terrible either. The heart murmur which hadn’t been a concern all of a sudden became a big issue.
Do we do the surgery? Do we not? Do we pick him up and have the surgery done closer to home in Boston? Is it worth the risk considering the heart murmur? What does this do with regard to our money issue? Would his potential new family still want him if he did not have the surgery? What would all the folks who donated the money want me to do? The more I talked to Dr. Weisse, the more unsure I became.
We agreed to talk the following morning and make a decision. We would both sleep on it and come to a decision in the morning. I spent the night talking to my husband, talking to friends, and talking to donor, and by 3 am I was no closer to making a decision.
The majority I talked to told me to go ahead and have the surgery done. But I was the one that would be directly responsible if he did not survive surgery.
What was going to be a two-stitch incision in his jugular would be a full abdominal incision and major procedure. Dr. Weisse was concerned that he was doing so well now and what could happen with surgery, as any surgery is a risk and with the heart murmur did we want to risk surgery?
Not to mention spend all the money that this surgery would cost, considering how well he was doing, how invasive the surgery was and the inherent risks of a big abdominal surgery.
Chick wasn’t pushing me in either direction; he said we could go home and have it done in Boston, but that if I wanted him to do it that he would be happy to perform the surgery. He had no strong feelings either way. It was then that I realized that here we were, with a world reknowned vet/researcher, and Cody was in the care of the best; why would I want him to be anywhere else? I bit the bullet and told him to go ahead.
While Cody was under anesthesia they opted to check his heart again. The earlier cardiologist had diagnosed him with a mitral valve dysplasia, a condition that if it progressed would surely shorten Cody’s life. This knowledge only added to the angst about whether or not to do the surgery.
But when they tested Cody on a newer piece of equipment at the Animal Medical Center, the cardiologist found the same noisy mitral valve but her conclusion was very different. On their equipment she was able to conclude that the likelihood of this heart murmur ever being a problem was very low, and thus it became clear that we had made the right decision in going ahead with surgery.
The surgery went well. You really don’t know if it succeeds in closing the shunt until about a month after the surgery. Cody was neutered and we picked him up on Thursday morning and brought him home. Keeping a young flat coat quiet for two weeks can be quite a challenge, but we succeeded and two weeks later Cody had his first bloodwork. It was still slightly abnormal but more normal than it had been. Two weeks later he had another set of bloodwork and that was absolutely normal. Since that time we have succeeded in taking Cody off all medications and his special food and his bloodwork has stayed normal.
Cody had gone for short weekend visits to his new family’s home, and we watched him stand at the door and watch them leave when they dropped him off after the weekend was over. He knew they were his family.
Two weeks ago, once he was weaned off his meds and special food, they came to pick him up and he went to live with them. He has a fenced yard, wonderful experienced owners who adore him, he is the center of attention and he has a beach house and a boat. They are looking for another rescue dog who needs them so Cody will have a friend. They are thrilled to have him, and all it took was one look at Cody to know that he is thrilled to have them and hopefully will have the good, long, healthy life with a family that loves him that every dog deserves.
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