Dreams come Crashing

I owe you the rest of the story of my Ripley.

I wasn't stringing it along for dramatic effect.  More so that it's a hard story for me to tell.  Even after all these months.  But, it's part of the fabric of my being a collie owner.  It's a legacy to the Collie Army.  I'd like to say it's a story to be told because it has some sort of meaning that can help others.  But I haven't found a meaning yet.   Maybe you can help find it for me.

I am a believer in Fate and that things happen for a reason.  I am.  But, yeah, but this...this one escapes me.

Ripley, as you know, was the first.  My Dream Come True.  After her came Geddy.  I adopted him because I knew the inevitable with Cheyenne was on the horizon.  My boon companion of nearly 15 years at that point, she wasn't ever going to be much of a playmate for a young active dog like Ripley.  Rooney came after Cheyenne took her journey to the Rainbow Bridge, and the original collie army was born.

And, suddenly, I had a houseful of young dogs again.  And they played boisterously.  And roughly.  I used to get concerned because the fair skinned Rooney would show signs of the rough housing around her mouth from where teeth were clashing and ropes were being tugged, but it was all just fun and games, so it caused me to be a little slow to worry over some scabbing that I started to notice around Ripley's eyes in February 2016.  Nothing seemed wrong and she was playing and happy, insistent on her twice a day walks.  I figured they were tussling a little too hard, and that was the cause.  I'm here to tell you, denial is a powerful opiate.

One Sunday we were having our usual lazy morning coffee and blogging in our favorite room - our sun room - when she did the collie-like laying on the back with the legs up in the air in a most unladylike fashion, and I saw it in the bright morning sun.  There was a lesion on her underside right near her leg, maybe the size of a half dollar at that point.  And when I examined her more closely, there were others along her toes and where the "moist" spots are.  Which of course, I realized with a slamming sensation, is exactly what the eyes are.

Ripley's first visit to the vet

And so it began.  So, to make a long ordeal as brief as possible:  her regular vet wasn't sure what it was but made a guess and started her on steroids.  They helped, but the side effects were severe.  She was a different dog.  An unhappy dog who could no longer play.  So I weaned her back on the steroids and the lesions came roaring back.  So they took a biopsy that wasn't conclusive.  We looked at other medications, some of which had severe side effects, like potential liver damage, but at some point it was clear that the steroids alone weren't doing it, so there was no choice but to step up to more dangerous drugs.  And after a couple of months, our regular vet had to concede it was time to send her on to a specialist.

And our relationship with the Pittsburgh Vet Care Specialty and Emergency Center was born.   PVSEC is where Pittsburgh police dogs are taken if they are injured, so it has a reputation of a good clinic.  I can add to that recommendation.  By the time we were done, Ripley was a patient in every department there save surgery.  Somewhere along the line the diagnosis that stuck was made:  she was suffering from VCLE.  Vesicular cutaneous lupus erythematosus.

VCLE, as one article put it most simply, is an autoimmue blistering skin disease primarily seen in rough collies and Shetland sheepdogs.  For the most part, it can be controlled.  Occasionally, and I read this early on, it cannot and the dog has to be euthanized.  It never occurred to me, even as she was requiring round the clock care and medication, we'd be there.  I kept a photo journal, most of which is too graphic to share here, the lesions will make your stomach do flip flops, thinking it'd be rewarding to look back on someday in triumph.  Again:  denial is a powerful thing.

But I wasn't alone, I don't think.  By summer, Ripley had a large care team of doctors and vet techs who were smitten with her like I was.  No one ever suggested to me we weren't going to win this fight.  The goal was to get it under control and then keep it that way.

My favorite photo from that time - bringing Ripley home after a hospital stay

But we were beginning to seesaw dangerously:  the disease would get under control, but the meds would make her sick.  So we'd back off the medication, and the disease would come back, only worse.  It attacked her eyes even.  And it would happen in an instant.  You'd blink, and her condition would change.  But everyone was too close to it.  Too involved in Ripley to truly see the truth.

Packing Ripley's medications

The other big event that happened that February was the announcement that my daughter was pregnant.  By her second trimester she was home with us, and it became very clear very quickly the house was too small for three dogs, one cat, three adults and a potential infant.  So, the arduous process of moving with a sick dog began.  Once more in the interest of time, all I'll say about that is one sometimes doesn't know how strong one is until they look back on a period of time and realize "Wow, I pulled that off."


The house we bought and moved in to was a better floor plan for Ripley - she could have everything she needed on one level, and I was excited to get her here, thinking she'd be more comfortable in this house.  Two weeks later, on my birthday, her second dermatologist, who was new to the case, called to try and convince me it was time to let her go.  She was the one who was detached enough, I look back on it and realize, to know what the rest of us couldn't face:  the collie army wasn't going to win this battle, and she pointed out the harsh truth that I was putting my daughter and her unborn child at risk.  Yep, it was that bad.

Still, we took a few weeks.  We backed off the pills and shots and was trying to concentrate on topical steroids, and Ripley got a little pep back.  She even played briefly with Geddy and Rooney.  But it began attacking her lungs - she was struggling to breath - and it became clear that allowing it to go on was cruel.  She was less than four years old on the day we took her in for her final time.

She rests easy now in a box next to Cheyenne at the foot of my bed.

I can't thank everyone who worked with her at North Boros Animal Clinic and PVSEC enough for doing battle with us.  I'm pretty sure I spent enough to put a couple of their kids through college, but they did what they did for her out of love and compassion.

The moral to the story, as best as I can work one out at this point, I think, is that dogs are family.  We'll do anything for them.  But sometimes that means making the hard decision to let them go.

Ripley, I miss you every day.