Priced to Live
by Karl Rothrock
Air chilled outside. The world seemed small. Tires rolled across wet pavement. Ahead in the sky, clouds loomed massively, suggesting more rain. The dog lay wrapped in a shroud, as quiet as the infant Christ. Spasms rocked the dog — eyes fixed, dilated — seemed complacent in its throes.
“This will be hardest on him,” Mom said. “He’s the one who has to do it. He hates killing animals; it’s why he quit hunting.”
“He still kills a deer every year,” I said.
“Yeah, but to him, it’s just meat in the freezer for half the year. It’s cheaper than buying it at the store. He’s providing for his family.”
“I know,” I said. “I just don’t like how fast everything happened.”
“I don’t, either,” she nodded, clutching the infant-sized canine to her breast, his body entrapped in another fit, becoming hard as granite. Mom looked at him. His head leaned against the passenger window. The dog was salivating uncontrollably. Drool was trailing down the door.
The doctor, a portly fellow who appeared more akin to a used car salesman with a stethoscope, rather than a licensed veterinarian, told us to hold the dog. No sooner had he spoken, he had smacked his hand, palm flat, on the surface of the aluminum table. The dog’s ears perked up, but his body remained rigid, tail fixed at an upraised curvature, hind legs splayed out, front paws shaking under the torso, the beagle frozen with seizures, a curse of genetics.
The vet took a book from the shelf. He flipped through the pages rapidly until he found the one he wanted. “There,” he said, pointing. His dry fingers rested on a single word: EPILEPSY. “If the seizures were caused by poison,” he said, somewhat casually, “the spasms would have worsened from the loud noise.”
The dog’s throes lessened, glassy eyes rolled lazily to look at us. The doctor pointed out that beagles have the highest chance of genetically contracting epilepsy. Something about that amused him; he laughed and slapped my arm.
Oh, funny little fat man, I thought.
The beagle, Tipper, began another bout of seizures. Drool streamed from his snout; light brown fur streamed with flecks of white around the nose. The eyes surrounded by black masks gleaming wet as if he were crying. Canine epilepsy has no cure. Treatment, however, is a viable option to decrease the frequency and severity of seizures.
“Otherwise, he would continue these fits until he died,” the veterinarian said. “He’ll need to be admitted, and we’ll put a catheter in him to stop the seizures.”
Epilepsy, a neurological disorder characterized by convulsions of the muscles, can be triggered by moments of excitability in dogs.
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