Congestive Heart Failure in Dogs – Sophie’s Final Chapter

Previous post at a glance:

• Sophie’s echo cardiogram and chest xray showed signs of improvement
• Her kidney values started to come down
• Her complementary meets conventional protocol isn’t found in any book or anywhere online

Homeopathy is allowing me to write this post.

Why Did Sophie Die When She Was Improving?

 

My beautiful Sophie passed away at home in my arms a few days ago. Her heart just gave out. If you’ve ever had a pet pass away in your arms, it’s quite a profound experience. Here’s what happened.

When I Last Wrote…

 

In my last post, we had been to Sophie’s cardiologist, Dr. Julia Lindholm, on September 7th.  She got a good report, meaning the echo cardiogram showed her heart had gotten a little smaller and the pressure in her lungs had come down a little bit. We were moving in the right direction.

Two days before, we’d had her blood drawn to check her kidney values again. Her BUN had come down from >130 to 80, still very high but moving in the right direction. Her creatinine had come down from 2.86 to 1.9. The ceiling of normal is 1.8, so that was good news, especially since the creatinine levels don’t rise until the kidneys are 75% failing. Sophie’s kidneys were healing.

So, what happened?

The Last Week of Her Life Was Telling

 

A week before Sophie passed, she started losing her appetite. I felt I had to start force feeding her, because I was very concerned about her getting the nutrients in her food and the supplements that were supporting her heart and kidneys. While I did it with as much care and love as I could, it was still a demoralizing experience for her and it was horrible for me. Twice a day we went through this. I think it was also stressful for her.

I ordered an appetite stimulant, a Chinese herbal blend called Digestion Eat from Healthy Paws Herbal Labs. It’s only Chinese herbs, colloidal silver and a bit of glycerin. Unfortunately, the post office never delivered it when it was supposed to, they resent and by the time it arrived, it was too late.

Sophie had good moments each day. On Saturday before she passed, she was out back exploring. She took her bully stick out to do her business because she didn’t want to leave it behind, so she was walking around with this big cigar of a bully in her mouth. It was very cute. When I came home that afternoon from a food shop, she met me with Anabelle at the door with her favorite pink stuffed bear in her mouth, something she used to always do when we got home but hadn’t done in a while. I’d bought that bear for her in Bye Bye Baby, a human baby store across the street from our apartment building in New York, City years ago. I’m now sleeping with that bear.

 

Sunday morning, she was in the backyard barking at a squirrel up the tree. Her eyesight was sharp as ever to the end; she’d bark at hawks and airplanes regularly. Sunday evening, I am grateful I decided to not give her her normal dinner. Instead, I offered her and Anabelle freeze-dried chicken necks. They loved them and Sophie chewed through hers and then a second one, eagerly.

There were also parts of each day during that last week especially, when she had trouble breathing; not enough for me to run her to the ER, but enough to make me wonder if and when the time would come when her quality of life was so impeded by her body, that it would be humane to let her go. I wanted so so much to heal my girl, and in the last week, I saw, more and more, that that was probably not going to happen.

Still, every day, I did an ozone treatment on her. This is something you should know about, because it is a wonderful modality that does heal.

 

The Power of Medical Ozone

 

Ozone therapy has been around since the 1940’s, another discovery of the brilliant Nikola Tesla. Doctors were using it a lot to heal, until Big Pharma came along with antibiotics and pushed ozone underground.

Veterinarians started using it more and more, recently, and it has helped with or healed a wide variety of conditions, illnesses and dis-eases. I’m not going to go into a long explanation of it here; that’s not the purpose of this post, but I will be writing about medical ozone in the near future.

For Sophie, I was doing inhalation treatments on her everyday through my oil bubbler, a necessity since breathing in pure ozone is dangerous to the lungs. Ozone inhaled after passing through an oil bubbler is healing to the lungs and entire respiratory system. I was hoping it would help heal her collapsed trachea.

Sunday night, after she enjoyed her chicken necks, we stayed up for awhile and then we all went to sleep, Sophie on the ottoman at the end of my bed, as she often does.

How Sophie Passed

 

At 5:30 the next morning, I awakened to soft gasping. I jumped out of bed and ran to the ottoman. I found Sophie already dying, lying on her belly, back feet splayed and her head to the side. I administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, to no avail. I noticed her tongue was already turning gray and her eyes were filmy. I scooped her up in my arms like a baby and started running into the garage to get her to the ER. But in seconds, I knew I couldn’t save her; it was her time.

When animals die, everything goes limp and they empty their bladder and bowels. I saw Sophie had emptied her bladder on that ottoman and noticed when I’d scooped her up, she then emptied her bowels on me. I held her as she died in my arms. Her heart finally gave out.

I wish I’d been calmer. When I picked her up to rush to the ER, I was panicked. But, once I knew, I just held her and when she’d passed, I cleaned her up, cleaned up the ottoman, placed her back down on it and called her dad in the UK, my ex-husband, Stanley Young.

He’d been wonderful, going through this entire journey with me, offering support. I know how hard it was for him, too, especially being over there, unable to do anything. Sophie had always been a daddy’s girl.

 

After Stanley and I talked and cried together, I brought Anabelle and Suki over to the ottoman, one by one, and let them sniff Sophie. I learned when Stanley and I had Albie, our beloved Chihuahua (also Ani’s father), euthanized in our home in Fort Lauderdale in 2020, that it was very important to do this to allow closure for the other animals. They always know. Then, I spent some time sitting next to her, my hand on her still-warm body, talking to her and loving her. I clipped some of her hair, laid it on my dresser and scooped her into my arms.

An animal’s lifeless body feels strange.  Sophie was still warm, her body had weight but no one was home.

I laid her on a towel on the front seat of the car next to me and took her to Austin Veterinary Emergency Specialists, where she’d been several times before over the past six months and where her cremation was going to be organized.

What Helped Me In My Grieving Process

 

And then I started grieving in earnest. Most or at least many of you reading this will relate, as you’ve had to say goodbye to a beloved animal or more than one. It hurts so deeply, you think you can’t survive it. For thirteen and a half years, Sophie was my baby girl, moved across three states with us, had adventures around the world; even how she came to us as a puppy has a story of traveling from far away, all night driving to an overseas flight, all with her dad. The waves of grief would come up at random times and take me, and I knew it was important to cry it out to heal.

There was one thing I am so blessed and grateful to know about that has helped a lot. The homeopathic remedy Ignatia is one often used for symptoms from underlying grief. I’ve suggested it to friends and clients grieving for their lost people and animals and for animals whose symptoms I felt were triggered by grief. It is a powerful yet gentle medicine.

I took three doses of Ignatia 200C, one each of three mornings, and the difference in how I felt was profound. I was no longer consumed by my grief. Did I still cry, of course. Was I and am I still sad? Yes. However, I feel lighter and much better able to manage my grief and I strongly recommend looking at Ignatia or Nat Mur, another homeopathic remedy often used for grief, if you are experiencing this, too.

Ignatia candidates grieve in private, and Ignatia is especially indicated after shocks, grief and disappointments. With Nat Mur, there is also the ill effects of grief, fright and also anger, but being consoled aggravates them; it doesn’t help. They are very irritable. And, they want to be alone to cry.

Homeopathy is such a wonderful tool to have; I so encourage everyone to learn the basics so you can help yourselves and your beloved animals with acute issues at home, visit the vet less and give your pets far less antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals.

Anyway, I digress; I’m a total geek about homeopathy.

I also now had time to reflect. Caring for Sophie, taking care of Ani and Suki and my clients and business was all a full time job. In reflection, it became clear to me that, by the time Sophie exhibited her first symptom, that cough back in early April, her heart was already far along in the dis-ease process. That first echo showed a very enlarged heart and a lot of pulmonary hypertension and fluid in the lungs/around her heart.

I think that moldy house was a major contributor to this; living in an environment that produced constant inflammation and breathing in that invisible mold doing constant damage to her lungs.

In retrospect, I don’t think I had the chance to make her well. What I do also think is that this big, beautiful complementary meets conventional protocol prolonged Sophie’s life with quality of life. I’m grateful for that. And, I learned so so much and am grateful to have shared what I was learning with you. From the feedback I’ve received, that knowledge seems to have been very helpful.

Writing about my journey with Sophie has also been very cathartic and writing this post now is helping with my grieving process.

To my surprise, on Wednesday morning, just two days after Sophie’s passing, I got a call that her memorial package was ready. I picked up my girl’s ashes in a beautifully carved wooden box; they made that lovely paw print with her name on it and a bunch of her hair with a certificate of cremation.

Sophie joins Albie with a shrine in her honor on my dresser. I’m putting together a package to send to England for Stanley as I write this.

 

A pet industry friend sent me a beautiful, thoughtful gift to honor Sophie that I’d like to share with you because it’s a great gift for others who’ve lost a pet or yourself. It’s a book called Remember Me As Sunshine, photographed and with poems by Jacqueline Lemieux-Bokor. You can learn more about it here. 

I still can’t believe she’s gone. I see her everywhere. I know this will recede, but I was talking to my friend Amy yesterday, who lost her beloved Penelope five years ago, and she has never been the same and still cries about her dog often.

I think it is important to celebrate Sophie’s life; to remember all of the funny, happy, quirky memories that are the essence of who our Sophie was. She is free and I’m very grateful for that and grateful she passed at home in my arms. She no longer suffers and her energy out in the Universe, watching over us, just wants me and her dad to be happy, to remember her as the vibrant, funny, sweet, beautiful dog she was. She doesn’t want us to keep crying or to suffer.

So that is what I choose to do. Sophie lived a rich, wonderful life. I’ll go through my grieving process and also remember the great times.  Over thirteen and a half years, there are too many of those to count.

To their best health ever.

Jody