Nina was not my dog. She was my youngest sister’s dog, for far too little time, but in that short time, that dog won the good life jackpot. Today is one year since Seanan and Adam (that’s my sister and her fiance) said their final, “Good-bye,” to a little dog who meant well, but boy, did she come with all kinds of baggage.
Seanan already had Carson, but she’d been playing around with adopting a second dog for a while. I forget the exact date (because remember, Nina wasn’t my dog), but sometime in late May or early June of 2019, she went off to the local shelter and came home with a little brown and white furball slightly bigger than Carson with a fluffier tail and some jacked up teeth. She named her Nina, after the lead character in the Netflix show The OA.
It didn’t take all that long to realize that Nina was needy. She was the definition of a shadow dog and also a huge trash eater. Nina couldn’t handle it if Seanan went to the bathroom without her, and she found numerous ways to access trash that should have been more than securely stashed away from an ~18 lb critter without opposable thumbs. In addition to these less than desirable behaviors, she would sometimes scream with excitement when neighbor dogs appeared in her vision on walks, and she would bolt out the door and take off running at any opportunity. She once took a flying leap off of a second floor deck on the 4th of July when she heard a firework go off in the distance.
Nina got so lucky with Seanan though. She got a devoted human to make sure she had appropriate vet care, to give her a warm and comfortable home, to take her for adventures to the mountains and to local parks on nice weekends, to take her out for the occasional run, to love her despite all of her accidents in the house, her penchant for sitting on the dining room table in front of the pet camera, her heart-stopping solo trips down the street any time someone wasn’t careful enough with an open door or her leash slipped off of a hand, her occasional disagreements with Carson and her generally high anxiety. There was never a question in my sister’s mind that once she paid the adoption fee and brought Nina home with her that Nina was her dog and her responsibility, come what may.
Seanan brought Nina to the vet for the first time within a couple of weeks of adopting her. She had her tested for heartworm and intestinal parasites, updated all of the lifestyle vaccines she would need for her new life with Seanan that the shelter doesn’t provide and started her monthly preventatives. Seanan did what all responsible dog owners are supposed to do for their new family members. After that initial visit, she kept up on Nina’s preventatives every month, and they just went about their every day lives.
Fast forward one year: Nina went to the vet in June 2020 for her annual check up. They talked about her teeth and that they really should plan to address those with a full dental in the next few months. All was going along as expected until her heartworm test results came back positive. The shelter had brought Nina up from somewhere in the South. She had tested heartworm negative the previous spring, but the thing about heartworm is that the test won’t be positive for 6-7 months after infection because of the life cycle of the worms and the nature of the antigen test used to detect them.
Heartworm disease is a terrible disease, and it can be fatal. There are different methods of treatment, but typically, the gold star method involves a month-long course of the oral antibiotic doxycycline, followed by a single injection of melarsomine given deep into the muscles of the lower back. After this first injection, the dog needs to be strictly rested for 4 weeks before having back-to-back melarsomine injections, 24 hours apart. These injections are followed another period of strict rest for an additional at least 4, but ideally 8, weeks.
Strict rest is hard for a lot of dogs and owners. I don’t know that I can think of anyone that does it absolutely perfectly because dogs are living things and because humans are not perfect. Seanan knew that they had a long weekend in the mountains with the dogs planned over Labor Day, so she chose to delay treatment until after the trip because she felt that they could ensure better rest if they waited. Nina had her first injection of melarsomine at the end of September 2020. She did just fine afterwards.
At the end of October, Nina spent 4-5 days at my house while Seanan and Adam were out of town. During her time with me, I brought her to work with me during the day. I tried to crate her in the doctors’ office, but she was so stressed that I ultimately decided leaving her out in the office was probably better for her. One day, she climbed onto my colleague’s desk and got into a bag that she had up there. Nina ate an entire bag of hamburger rolls that had been in there, intended for sandwiches. Later in the week, she broke into our mini fridge and ate a different colleague’s club sandwich that was meant to be that colleague’s lunch that afternoon. (Apparently, Magic helped, as she pooped out a whole toothpick about 3 days later… The things that Magic has eaten and shouldn’t have could be its own post.) The club sandwich led to several days of raging diarrhea.
The week after her stay with us, Nina received her next two injections. Initially, she seemed OK. Maybe a week or 10 days later, she went to the ER for being “off.” If I recall correctly, she had a slight fever, but did alright after some supportive care. She had a follow-up visit with her regular vet, and all seemed to check out. The Sunday before Thanksgiving, Seanan texted me, worried about Nina’s breathing. She sent me a video of her, curled up in a ball with a very rapid respiratory rate. I told her that she needed to get her back to the ER immediately, that she could not wait for her regular vet to open the next day.
Nina was admitted to the local emergency facility that day with a pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE), a potential risk of heartworm treatment secondary to the dying worms. Theoretically, the risk is higher after the first injection because by the second and third, a good portion of the worms have already been killed by that first injection. When Seanan first alerted me to Nina’s respiratory distress, she noted that they had gone for a very short walk on a flat trail across the street from her house a day or two prior. Theoretically, she was about 3 weeks out from her injections, when risk of PTE should be fairly low, and Seanan felt that the walk was low stress and low energy. Whether or not this specific walk was a problem or not, we can only speculate. I know Seanan felt incredibly guilty afterwards.
Nina never made it out of the hospital. She received exceptional care with emergency and critical care doctors, loving nurses and all indicated diagnostics, including ultrasounds of her heart and her abdomen. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough. Her heart was failing, and by the time her belly started filling with fluid, Seanan knew that there was only one decision she could make for her girl, so on Thanksgiving Day last year, she and Adam went to cuddle Nina one last time and let her go peacefully.
We don’t tend to see much heartworm in the area where we live. Most cases are dogs like Nina, who came from down South. Most of those dogs, we catch the heartworm on their first visit, but I’ve had at least one patient that tested negative at the time of adoption and came up positive several months later. Most dogs that are positive and undergo the same treatment that Nina did, even dogs that aren’t necessarily kept as quiet as they should be, have no issues following their treatment. Nina’s story is not the norm, but it should be a cautionary tale. When I, or any vet or vet tech, will tell you to get your dog on preventatives and to give them monthly, we don’t want your dog to be the odd man out, like Nina. We’re not selling you something unnecessary because we’re in the pocket of big veterinary pharma, nor are we trying to poison your dog. We are trying to keep your dog from dying of a preventable disease.
No one that knew Nina in her life with Seanan knows what Nina’s life was like before Seanan brought her home, but I do know that Nina had a hell of a year and a half with my sister and her family. I know that that silly little dog will always be with my sister, and I know that at least one of my techs will always tell Nina’s story when she meets a client that isn’t giving their dog their heartworm prevention. I know that my colleague with the hamburger rolls made damned sure to keep her dog as quiet as possible for a full 8 weeks after his 2nd and 3rd melarsomine injections when he also tested positive for heartworm months after adoption and an initial negative test. I hope that Nina’s story does good for other dogs moving forward.
R.I.P. Nina. You had your imperfections, but you were perfect for Seanan, and you will always be missed.
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” ~ Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
