When making the decision to be responsible for a pet, you should be prepared to have them for the long run. For, hopefully, their entire life. When I got my Mini Schnauzer, Tori with my mom as she got her own puppy from the same litter, I was aware that I would have this dog for upwards of ten years or more.

As the routine of having a puppy for the first time became concrete, that idea seemed more like a certainty. Tori is my dog, and I absolutely fell in love with her. She was so perfect in my eyes and filled with so much feisty personality.

At four months old, Tori became very sick. She was extremely lethargic and barely moved, her breathing was rapid. My mom and I took her to the vet and discovered fluid surrounding her lungs and heart, and she was diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia. It was very scary, her breaths per minute were in the 80s to 90s, when they were supposed to be in the 40s. She was barely responsive and her eyes were glossed over. With medication and an oxygen chamber, she made a full recovery, or so we thought.

While Tori was spunky and had an attitude at times, she was always more subdued than her brother. We thought that was just how she was, she wasn’t a super hyper puppy like I had imagined her to become. That was until she was 7 months, when she got her spay and could barely wake up from anesthesia. They had to inject fluid to get her to wake up and even then, she didn’t fully wake up for a while after we got home.

It seemed to be a downward spiral from there. Only two weeks later, Tori started to pace around the house. She was restless. It progressed only after a day into head pressing, drooling, and becoming unresponsive to stimuli. My mom and I took her to the emergency vet and she was taken into the ICU until a specialist could take ultrasound photos of what we suspected was a liver shunt.

The specialist confirmed that she did have a liver shunt, enlarged kidneys, a small liver, and gallbladder disease as a result of the shunt. This issue was genetic, caused when a blood vessel bypasses the liver instead of going through it and not filtering the toxins of her food. These toxins get circulated and bile builds up in her body and can cause neurological issues if the toxins are too high. Since anesthesia is hard on the liver, I suspect that her surgery was just the tipping point of her already overworked body.

With medication and a low protein diet she should fair better until she gets bigger and can have the surgery which would solve many of her issues. She now has three medications that she needs to have around the clock, and prescription food.

Although Tori eats as much as her brother, she is significantly smaller and looks as if she doesn’t eat much at all. She is now very sensitive to foods with protein and she cant have her favorite treats anymore. After starting her new medication routine, Tori has become the puppy she was trying to be all along. Her tail was up more often and she had a lot more energy and is your typical excited puppy which was so relieving to me.

Sometimes we will make a mistake which leads to her having a neurological episode for about a day which is exhausting for both her and myself. The vet says her case is on the severe side and online the average life span for dogs with this genetic issue is around three years or less.

While many dogs who undergo the liver shunt surgery live normal long lives, Tori cannot have this surgery yet until she is more physically healthy, bigger, and weighs more. For the past month I have been trying so hard to help her gain weight without adding too much protein or hard to digest foods but she looks as skinny as ever and it scares me. What if she is never big enough to withstand the surgery? What if we push for this surgery and her body is not strong enough to withstand it?

All I really want is for Tori to not have to take medication five times a day anymore, for her to never have an episode again, and to gain weight and be able to be a normal dog. I prepared to have a dog for a decade, not less than three years. This possibility puts a lot of dread in my subconscious. I think about her not being with me now and I just can’t imagine it. In 8 months she has changed my life, I spend most of my time with her and taking care of her and the love that she gives me is something I hadn’t experienced from a pet of my own, I never thought that a dog’s love could be so unique.

I wrote the bulk of this in February, and in only one month Tori has significantly filled out, gained weight, and has had no full neurologic episodes in over a month. On May 23rd, she and her brother will have their first birthday! We plan on having a joint birthday with my boyfriend’s dog, Rue, who will celebrate her 13th birthday on May 13th. It will be her golden birthday!