Malie was a beautiful yellow Lab with amber eyes. She was sweet, gentle and quickly learned her place in our pack. Unfortunately, she found herself at the bottom of the pecking order but did not let that stop her from edging her way in to lick a spoon, take a treat or find some attention…although she preferred to have one-on-one time without the other dogs around. She would cuddle up with you and just enjoyed the “alone” time. She came to us plagued with what appeared to be a bladder issue and initially we thought she was not entirely house trained. Almost a year into her time with us and with much perseverance we found that she had ectopic ureters. We had that surgically repaired but it did leave her with a life of frequent UTI infections and what seemed like a forever round of antibiotics. It didn’t slow her down at all and in fact she was always exuberant and anxious to be wherever you were at…she accompanied me on many trips in the bathroom.
In November 2024, very unexpectedly and quickly her health took a turn in the matter of a morning on a Sunday and she was gone. The emergency vets initially thought she might have a flipped stomach and needed to get her vitals stabilized so they could get an xray. Unfortunately it was not a flipped stomach, I say unfortunately because had it been we could have saved her with surgery. As it ended for her the vitals just continued to plummet until she was gone. There was nothing they could do for her and they are not certain what happened. They wanted to send her to CSU for an autopsy but I just couldn’t bring myself to put her through that after all she had been through.
We miss our Malie and it was heartbreaking that it happened so quickly, we don’t know what happened and most importantly, she was the first pet I have had that I was not with her when she passed.