![]() Modern science tells us that heartworm is just one source of animal suffering in nature among scores of others. Crans lists “loss of body weight, dropsy, chronic cough, shortness of breath, muscular weakness, disturbances of vision, chronic heart failure”-death is all but certain. By the time symptoms manifest-entomologist Wayne J. Growing up to seven inches long and tangled together in a squirming, spaghetti-like mass, the worms feast on the dog’s organs. When the mosquito feeds again, larvae are left embedded in the host’s skin, growing until they move into the bloodstream and are transported to the lungs and heart. When a mosquito takes blood from an infected animal, it swallows microscopic larvae, which then grow in its digestive tract until finally breaking out into the mouthparts. They must be vaccinated for rabies and are besieged by hordes of micropredators, such as ticks, fleas, biting flies, mosquitoes-and the horrifying heartworm. From the time they are born, dogs face dangers that can cut their lives short. Buffy finally stopped retrieving.ĭespite Buffy’s suffering in her old age, she lived a long and full life compared to many dogs. She brought the dummy back, but this time she dropped it and, with a heavy breath, lay down. Her eyes and ears said, Throw it again! So I did. Buffy ambled after it, picked it up, and brought it back. Outside on the front lawn, I tossed the dummy a short distance. I could not believe that Buffy still wanted to retrieve. ![]() I was surprised when she abruptly perked up, struggled to her feet, shook once, and looked up at me expectantly. The day before Buffy died at the age of 16, she was lying half awake on the living room floor and needed to go outside. I never trained her for field trials, but we did retrieving drills almost every day with a bright orange “dummy.” Unlike Blue, her sister from another litter, Buffy never showed even the slightest sign that she was ready to stop retrieving. They must also be able to keep going at full speed when most dogs begin to flag. In field trials, dogs must be eager, fast, and acutely alert to hand signals. Our veterinarian, Beth, told us that Buffy had the largest, slowest “athlete’s heart” of any dog she had seen in 20 years of practice.īuffy inherited her athletic heart from her grandmother, a dog that won numerous national field trial championships. My Labrador retriever Buffy had a big heart.
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