Fozzie loves the Christmas tree. He loves to play under it, cantering around the tree’s base and making the whole tree rustle like there is a tiny velociraptor inside. He also loves to curl up on the soft, faux fur tree skirt and make a cozy den for himself. Oftentimes you can hear a quiet snoring emanating from the corner of the living room the Christmas tree inhabits, like the tree is having itself a good snooze.
Ordinarily, I enjoy the ritual of putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it, but last year was bittersweet because we were pretty sure it would probably be Fozzie’s last Christmas. I honestly wasn’t confident he would even make it to Christmas. He hadn’t been eating much, was very lethargic, and just seemed… tired. His primary vet felt that his accumulating health problems were achieving critical mass. After the tree was up, Fozz wasn’t much interested in playing under the tree, and my heart broke a little.
Fozzie had been on a steady decline during November. It got so bad that on the night before Thanksgiving we called Laps of Love, the veterinary hospice, and made an appointment for Sunday to euthanize Fozzie at home. We didn’t go through with it. We had an appointment the following Tuesday with the Internal Medicine team at MedVet Dayton. Dr. O, the internist, had helped with Kirby and we wanted to see if she could do anything help with Fozzie.
She did.
Dr. O ran a battery of tests and deduced that Fozzie had hypertension, and prescribed him something to help with it. She recommended a new diet geared toward dogs with chronic liver and kidney issues. She also put him on some other stuff to bully his organs into improving.
Fozzie slowly got better. His kidney and liver enzyme levels improved. His blood pressure went back to normal. He regained his appetite and began eating regularly. He became stronger, more energic. He started playing under the tree again. Christmas came and went, and not only was Fozzie still here, but he’s the healthiest and happiest he’s been since late 2020.
I have no idea how much longer we’ll have Fozzie. I won’t kid myself: no matter how well he’s doing now, he is still a 19-going-on-20-year-old good boy with chronic kidney and liver disease. As such, we haven’t taken the tree down yet, though we did recently swap out the Christmas ornaments for some glittery, gold stars, thus metamorphosing the Christmas Tree into the Winter Tree. Not sure what we will do in the spring, if we’ll keep the tree up or finally take it down, but for now — it’s Fozzie’s.
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Fun fact: After I took this photo of Fozzie the other night, I realized he had somehow gotten a string of lights wrapped around his chest and was, in fact, stuck.
