Oh gods, days like today are days that I dread the most. Last night before bed, LaVaughn noticed that Leo was breathing really hard and semi lethargic. We were all out of Doxy, so I gave him a nice sized dose of prednisone and went to bed. When I got up today around noon, he had deteriorated even more. He was moving around the cage quite a bit, which made me feel a little better, but he was still in really bad shape.
I got him out, wrapped him in some fleece and fed him half of a yoggie. That's really all he would eat. After I woke LaVaughn up, she helped me get a Baytril pill down him, but it never really went all the way down. He mainly just held it in his mouth. I was waiting to hear from the vet on whether we should meet her at the clinic tonight, or wait until tomorrow.
I sat in the living room, holding him in my arms for about 5 minutes. That's when he started open mouth breathing -- this is when they're in extreme respiratory distress. It wasn't two minutes later that he started really gasping for air. He was opening his mouth and really throwing his head back, it was awful. At that moment I knew I had to prepare myself for what was coming next.
I started back towards the bedroom, barely able to see due to the tears I was shedding. I didn't even make it to the bed before he drew one last breath, then he stiffened up and stopped moving. I was hysterical at that point. LaVaughn rushed into the bedroom and asked what was wrong, which I began to tell her. She lost it after that and the two of us held him and cried for another 30 minutes.
They may just be rodents or "nasty" animals to most, but to us they're sweet, loving, gentile, and kind animals that we call our babies. I'm still at a loss and can't honestly believe that he's gone.
I'm not going to be much use for anything other type of content in this blog, so I'm going to end it here. We're trying to spend as much time with Louie as we can.
-Megan
RIP Leo...
November 2014 - April 2016
Here are some pictures of Louie, getting lots of snuggles:
