My Dog is Sick

 A few weeks ago, Jan and I decided to send in our eleven year old daschund, Rigby, in to the vets. He'd been having problems with peeing on the floor, and getting up two or three times a night to go outside to pee. We noticed that he was drinking an uncommon amount of water as well. Needless to say, the interruptions played havoc with our sleep patterns. Jan was gone for a few weeks, so all the babysitting was left to me. I slept with the bedroom  door slightly cocked open so he could push his way in and wake me up in the night. It wasn't any too restful to say the least. On more than one occasion he pushed open the door after he had already peed on the floor outside my room. Lovely. Anyway, we finally decided to send him in and see what the vet had to say. I was reluctant to send him in, I knew the bill would be a doozy, and I also hate to put him through the trauma of going into a kennel and transporting him on the plane. I'd rather be in the cage myself. I know, I know, he's terribly spoiled. I knew that would happen if I had a dog. I also knew that vet bills would be part of having a pet, and that when a mammal eats, it also produces waste. All things that I didn't want to deal with. Just today I was checking the anti-freeze in the truck when I stepped in a pile. I was really happy to have to find an old tooth brush and give my shoe a thorough cleaning during my lunch hour. I just finished and decided to don my slippers and go back to finish the job. I promptly found another pile hidden in the gravel of the driveway. I love my dog dearly, but I'll never have another. My heart will break when he passes on, but as we enter our golden years, there is less and less gold to go around, and his latest vet bill is going to set us back about $1,000.00. Plus his meds, which apparently he has to be on for the remainder of his life, costs an additional $72.00 a month. The hits just keep on coming folks. The bottom line is that he has Cushing's Disease. I guess it's caused by small tumors on the pituitary gland, causing it to put out too much  cortisol. The end result is the uncommon thirst, the need to urinate frequently, a rather large abdomen (not totally the result of the disease), and some hair loss. As it was, he was already taking thyroid medicine. Two pills a day. He has hypothyroidism. Unbelievably, so do Jan and I. All three of us are taking meds for it. What are the odds? In any event, if things keep going the way they are, all three of us will be sharing  the dog food, because we won't be able to afford both the medicine and food. Isn't life grand?