Thank you all so very much for your kind posts and words. Andie is still alive, and all four of us visited her at the vet's tonight. The veterinarian was kind enough to let us in after hours--his house is on the same premises as the clinic, he talked with us as we tried to encourage her to stand. She has normal movement on her front right leg, imperfect movement on her left front, about the same right rear, and spastic almost directionless movement back left. She can still partially wag her tail. She seemed more aware of properly positioning her body, but her bad legs just don't have the strength.
We talked to the vet and he will let me pick her up early tomorrow afternoon and take her home for a few hours. I'll place her outside on a blanket, give her some of her favorite treats, including her chew bones and some molasses rolled grains--she shares this with the goats and actually likes it better than regular dog food. I don't let her have more than a cup of it, though. Of course she'll get some pieces of cheese and other tasty things as they come to mind. Then I will attempt a trick that I've heard of when people and animals have some paralysis and when this person or animal responds without thinking to an emergency, the person or animal suddenly gets up and runs normally to help or whatever. My stimulus will be her favorite walking collar and leash. Then I'll say a silly little set of phrases about "wok"ing the dog. It involved stuff like, "The kids are hungry and--We're fresh out of kitties, fresh out of chickies, fresh out of bunnies, and fresh out of pot-bellied-pigs... so... Guess what? It's time to..." (a beat) "wok the dogs!" At this point she'd be leaping into the air with excitement and joy. Then I'd hook up her special collar with the leash and take her and whatever other dog we had at the time for a walk. Being a Malamute cross, it was more like a hard steady pull rather than loose leash. I hope this works because anything short of direct divine intervention she will otherwise take that last trip to the vet's after her visit home tomorrow.
I don't know how much cremation costs, but we may elect to do that as the ground is frozen solid here and we can't dig a grave for her with just a shovel and pick. I'll try and ask one of our neighbors who has a backhoe if he'd be willing to dig a hole for us. If he's willing, then we'll go that way. We have sufficient land, and have buried most of the cats we've lost over the years, as well as special chickens. If he can't, then cremation.
However it turns out tomorrow, I'll let everyone know here. Thanks again for your support, as we thought she'd be around for a very long time to come, it's all the harder. She has absolutely no other health problems, and aside from a small leg tumor removal recently and her spay when she was 6 months old, she has never needed veterinary care--her blood panels were perfect a year ago. She does have mild cataracts, but so far she doesn't act vision impaired. This makes it sadder since she's not even suffering, just confused about why she can't be home with us, and why she can't stand. When we're there she eats with gusto and drinks nicely. She doesn't eat as well when we're not there. She's still continent, though she does have to let go in her kennel on occasion--just never when we're around. I'll visit her in the morning, then in the afternoon get her into the back of the pickup truck--she loves rides, and take her home. It's a 3 mile drive through the country and she'd like that, too.
Chris
). She's only seen about -28° F as the lowest even while in Alaska--Anchorage's cold is moderated by the presence of the Cook Inlet.
