a steady stream of chatter: clark kent: the girl dog with a dude's name

I may or may not have mentioned before, but Clark Kent is my dog. My female dog. It's not really that interesting of a story (how I named her, I mean), but basically I just thought it would be funny to name a dog Clark Kent. My plan was to adopt a male, so when I found a listing for "FREE PUPPIES!!!!!!" on CraigsList, I immediately emailed the family and asked if they still had any little boy puppies left. They said yes, but when we met them to pick up the puppy, surprise!, he was a she (how do you mix THAT up?). Anyway, I was all, fuck it, let's still name her Clark Kent. See? Not terribly interesting, but there you have it.

the day we brought her home (ahhh so small!)

Christmas 2009

All the same, she is hands down the light of my life, one of my single greatest joys. Clark is brilliant, does tons of tricks, and is hands down the sweetest, most affectionate (read: co-dependent?), albeit at times hyper-active, dog in the world. I love her.

my absolute favorite picture of her :)

Today when I got home from errands, however, she didn't bark or run to the door to greet me. I looked around until I finally found her curled up under the coffee table, looking strange. She wouldn't respond to me, wouldn't move; her body was burning up and her left front & back legs were completely swollen. This was my cue to freak the hell out. I rushed her to the vet and then to the animal ER (my vet wasn't in today, of course) where blood was drawn, x-rays were taken and copious amounts of medication were administered.

Results?

Clark has Shar Pei fever.

Earlier this year we took her to the vet for a similar situation (high fever, swelling) but wrote it off as a freak incident. The doctor today informed us that Shar Pei fever is hereditary (she's a mutt, but we do know, duh, that she's part Shar Pei), it's not curable and eventually leads to irreversible kidney failure.

Meaning today I became the girl who sobs publicly in the animal ER.

Fevers, swollen "knees" (called hocks), incidents like this will keep happening for, well, the rest of her life. The only thing we can do is manage the part of the fever that causes protein deposits to form in her kidneys (obviously causing kidney disease, and then failure). There's a medicine we have to track down and start her on immediately that will hopefully stave this off for as long as possible, but the part I can't over is when the doctor said that this will shorten her life significantly. I absolutely lost it.

explorer dog!

She's only a year and a half old, and I can't imagine losing her. And she's not just a dog, not to me at least. Anyway, I just needed to get all that off my chest, and I would really appreciate anyone's prayers. :)