A 365 day challenge to focus on being thankful.

As the challenge goes along, I don’t have a great system for organizing these posts. I take them day by day and look for things to be thankful for each day. It keeps my mind churning and looking for the good in all the situations. Sometimes that little nugget of gold is a little bit harder to find than others. Or sometimes it reveals itself at the resolution of a stressful situation.

This past week, the second was true for Tuesday night into Wednesday. We are still not sure what happened but our sweet Shadow fell ill on Tuesday evening. He was fine all day and then at supper time, he wouldn’t even approach his food bowl to eat. He stayed on the other side of the room and would walk away if we tried to approach him with any of his favorite treats, like bananas. Shadow loves bananas so much, sometimes I think he is part monkey. If you are eating a banana around Shadow, you better hold that yummy goodness as high as you can or it will be removed from your hands faster than you can say lickety-split. When he wouldn’t even entertain the thought of scarfing the banana down, I knew something was really wrong.

He was walking around panting and very uncomfortable. I was worried it was twisted stomach, which is not uncommon in big dogs, but he hadn’t eaten since the morning. He finally laid down, a good sign, but was still very uneasy. He couldn’t get comfortable until he finally rolled over onto his side. He was shivering with every breath. I’m not certain if he was shivering because he was cold or because he was in distress. We covered him with a heated blanket and he finally seemed to settle down. As the evening went on, he was having trouble standing up and he kept looking at me with pain in his eyes.

I was worried we were going to lose him Tuesday night. Everything was happening so quickly, the same way it did when we lost one of my childhood dogs. I called the emergency vet but they didn’t seem to think it was an urgent situation. I wasn’t so sure but wanted to trust them. I was told to monitor him and let them know if anything got worse. He slept in the room with me that night. I kept waking up through the night to make sure he was still breathing. Usually I can at least hear him breathing but this time I had never seen him so still. He didn’t move throughout the night. No puppy dreams, no kicking his feet, no whimpering, nothing. I was preparing myself for the worst.

As the daylight came I could see his chest rise and fall and knew he was still with us. He lifted his head to look at me as if to say, “I’m going to be ok”. He was fighting back from whatever had gripped him the previous night. It was a slow start to the day. Shadow was still very weak but he was gaining his strength back. For breakfast, he ate a little bit of chicken and rice and was very happy about it. His tail started to wag again instead of being lowered in pain. We went on a very short, controlled leash walk so he didn’t decide he needed to take off after the deer. All seemed to be getting better with every step. After a quick trip to the vet, they didn’t seem to know what had happened either but said if it happened again, call them right away.

Even though it was a very long and scary night, without much explanation of a cause, he was getting stronger and better with every hour of the new day. It took a few days for him to be back to his old self but he has been standing in his resilience ever since. I am so thankful Shadow made it through the night!

Shadow is a Great Dane/Lab rescue. When we adopted him, his name was Patrick but we decided Shadow suited him much better. He has truly been my Shadow since he joined our family. He follows me around the house wherever I go. Sometimes he anticipates where I am going next and leads the way. He knows my patterns and has picked up on cues for when I am moving from room to room. He loves playing outside and sometimes does a sneaky hide and seek when we let him out at night. He is all black and when the moon is not bright, he can be difficult to see. He is a quiet dog, he doesn’t really whimper or bark (unless he sees a deer then all bets are off). He is the sweetest boy and loves to snuggle like a giant 75lb teddy bear. I am so thankful Shadow accepted us as his family and am especially thankful he is still with us.