Sick, Sweet Boys -- Ouch!

Fritzy came home from the vet's early Saturday morning, very tired, very lethargic. He sleeps a lot. He refused any canned or dry food but the vet sent a recipe with him that we could fry up: hamburger, rice, hard-boiled egg, white bread all mixed together with a little bit of warm water. This he adores and gobbles up with no resistance. He needs a multi-vitamin to go with but that's fine as long as he's n0t vomiting up everything else.

This morning the vet called to say Fritz also has an extremely bad kidney infection -- his tests showed three different strains of bacteria so he now has a 40 day stint of antibiotics to run through, then another round of $100+ testing. The antibiotics aren't cheap, either.

Meanwhile, Gussie, he of the bad hips and legs, threw something out in the park this morning and now is hobbling around on only two legs, while the back ones send him gimping sideways and partially falling over. It's always something.

Thursday we meet with the vet to learn to do sub-cutaneous IV's, hoping to keep Fritzy healthy for a little longer. If Gus isn't any better then she'll look at him, too -- but every time they've seen him, they just throw up their hands and suggest more X-rays, all of which give no definitive answers as to what's wrong with his back end. Meanwhile each X-ray runs $100 or more.

Last week's vet bill ran to over four figures. The one on Thursday is also going to be highly costly, just for Fritz. So we're medicating Gus with aspirin, massage, and the laying on of hands. I know he hurts but we can't afford much more dog misery without facing some serious misery ourselves. Poor little boys. Poor bank account!