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We lost Augie
suddenly on the night of June 15th at a
little over 4 1/2 years of age. These pictures give you an idea
of the immense personality that he possessed...
It's a pretty tough loss.
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Around 10:30 or so
Harriet woke me (although Augie was panting pretty noisily
so I wasn't deeply asleep) and we thought he was having a heatstroke. We began
to
bathe him in ice and cold water/wet towels to try and cool him off.
After an intensive effort to cool him
off, his breathing seemed to calm, implying success. He quit breathing at
midnight.
In the end the vets reported both lungs full of blood as well as the pericardial
sac
around his heart. In a bizarre coincidence, the Lewis and Clark
re-enactment group
lost their 1 1/2 year old Newfoundland "Seaman" the same night
(6-15-2004)
from the same catastrophic internal failure. Harriet suspects Subaortic
Stenosis is the
underlying cause and Trisha (Augie's source) has offered Canine
Dilated Cardiomyopathy as another
possibility. We'll be discussing this with the vets and I'll update you when we know.
7/1/2004 update:
The docs choose
SAS as
the ultimate cause of death. Without going into
the grisly details, there are physical diagnostics for CDC
that were not met.
Augie was tested and cleared for SAS as a pup, but, murmurs can come and go
and his was obviously missed so this ends as an unforeseeable tragic loss.
