Emi - The Warrior Dog!

This was the first picture we saw in the online classifieds with the state paper...these puppies were so cute...we were trying to figure out which one we wanted. We couldn't decide so we got both!Our Emi puppy was quite the warrior. She didn't have a good shot from the beginning! In April of 2007, we got these two cute little puppies! They were just as cute as they could be! We got them a 8 weeks of age. Very young and probably younger than we should have. Emi is the brown one and cooper was the grey one. These two puppies were polar opposites!

Cooper was mild and meek. He hated being alone. You couldn't walk two feet without him being on your heels.

But Emi she was STUBBORN and strong willed. We could walk Cooper on a leash as soon as we got him because right behind us is where he wanted to be. Not Emi. No ma'am! She would sit her butt down and drag it along the concrete side walk. This girl had no shame in her game.

This picture below is the perfect picture to explain why we named her Emi! Em= fat in Thai. So we threw and "i" on the end to call her "fati". Our little roly poly didn't stay fat long!

So...we got these two precious puppies and by the end of the first week, it became VERY apparent that these two dogs were deathly sick! They both had parvovirus. We had them both hospitalized. Cooper was on IVs and Emi was given fluid shots. Emi survived and Cooper did not.

We mourned the lost of our new puppy and went on living with Emi.

I dont remember when we found out but as Emi grew it became apparent that she was having pains in her jaw. We learned that she had a genetic disorder that is mostly found in terrier breads called Craniomandibular osteopathy. I believe it was around 3 months of age when Emi's face would swell. Both sides of her checks would enlarge. She would run fever and would not want to eat. The episodes lasted for a week or two and then would subside. A week in between and we would be at it again. The older that she got the less it would happen. The disease only lasted until she was 1 years old. The following pictures were from her last swelling. It got to the point were she would only swell once a month and it got down to only one side of swelling.

This is the normal side of her face and then the picture below is her swollen side.

We always knew when she was in pain because she would squint her eyes like this.

So the years was up. She had stopped swelling and we thought now this dog can have a normal life! We are home free! We had trained her to be such a good dog! everyone commented on how well behaved she was. All thanks to Chris' dog whisperer training! But no, we were not out of the woods. A few months after her 1st birthday we noticed she was throwing up bile. This sometime around spring or summer of 2008. We took her straight to the vet and they said she had ulcers - probably due to some of her medication she had been on. We didn't love this vet's office so we got a second opinion.

Come to find out Emi had liver disease due to all the Tylenol with codine she was on for her jaw...every other week for the first year! You would have thought these vets would have known not to prescribe her that much or to alternate her medications to save the liver!

So the next step was to put her on several medications, vitamins, and prescription dog food. We kept this routine up for many many months, with weekly checkups and blood withdraws. It became very expensive quickly with no answers on how long we would need to keep this up.

Finally after several months, we pushed for an answer. They said that we could only maintain the liver, and at best she would have 2-3 years. After much thought we decided it was not worth it to do this. We loved emi but it was coming to the point where we needed to cut some stuff out.

This summer (2009) we had her on a few medications and her food. We began to notice some swelling on her abdomen. We put her on lasix. We were told to do it as needed. We only had her on it three times.

Most of the time she was very skinny with spirits of energy. This picture below was at my birthday party mid-October. My twin sister and I had our 27 birthday party surrounding the USC Gamecock game. My sister, Dawn, bought Emi this cute cheerleading outfit.

Little did we know this would be the last picture taken of her. On friday I was preparing to leave for a trip when Chris called me and asked me to swing by the house before leaving. Chris had put her outside for the first time. It was nice cool day and we thought it would be a good idea for her to have free rein of food and water and be able to go outside. For the last month it seemed she was having trouble holding her pee for 8 hrs or more. When he got home, Emi was foaming from the mouth and walking really funny. She hadn't drank or eaten anything all day. This was VERY unusual because this dog LOVED water!

When i got there Emi wasn't able to keep her head still. She was moving her legs repeatedly in galp sort of way. She would walk right pass us like she didn't see us. When chris would give her water from the syringe, she would just clamp down on it. She started to clamp down and not being able to release. She bit her cage at one point and wouldnt let go.

Chris took her to the vet and he said she was going into septic shock. She was having some brain damage due to it. That is why she wouldn't be able to quit doing things. She would do them over and over. She still could shake and sit when chris told her to. it was so strange and sad. So that day we decided to put her to sleep. We never thought it would be so quickly. I felt so bad, if i had known that morning before leaving for work... i would have spent more time with her. i would have hugged on her.

She was a fighter. Every time something tried to take her down, she wouldn't let it. Even when putting her to sleep, they had to use extra medicine because her heart wouldn't stop.

Emi 3/1/07 through 10/31/09