Since we have some newer readers here at Preppernation.com, I’ll give a little more detail on what I mean by B O D… B O D (Bug Out Dog), is the nickname I gave my 100 pound female Rottweiler. Kind of a spoof on the whole OPSEC theme. Anyway, sadly we lost our very big baby girl this last spring and I thought I would share with you all the details of what transpired thus also bringing you more current on what’s been going on with the “Prepper” family!

 

   Many of you will recall that we’d raised BOD since she was a pup. We nearly lost her on another occasion shortly after we brought her home from the breeder. She had eaten a poison mushroom while getting acquainted with her new front lawn… Our family had waited a long time to get our first dog and it almost seemed as though it wasn’t meant to be? Kind of naively we had gone through a breeder to find our pup and ended up grossly over paying for her. Followed by a large vet bill to save her after the mushroom meal she ate… It just didn’t look like we were going to have a pleasant first experience in dog ownership?

 

   Anyone that knows the Rottweiler breed will tell you that while these are very smart dogs, they are just as stubborn as they are intelligent! With great frustration we took BOD through some obedience classes, she did graduate but it appeared that we were the ones that got trained more so than she did…? I’m making it sound like she wasn’t a good dog, not true – she was a great dog! It was just that first year and a half that left us feeling that we made a mistake in which breed we had selected.

 

   Mrs. Prepper and Prepper Juniorette would have been fine with going the traditional family dog route, get a yellow Lab and a lint roller, done! Not me though, I wanted a dog that would serve as a deterrent! Thus the Rottweiler, actually we were familiar with the breed as my brother keeps Rott’s too! His dog’s were very protective of the family and looked scary too – perfect! I should have inquired as to the work it took to do the small amount of training he did to get his dog’s to act right! Nope, not me, just go find a breeder and get started…

 

   Oh well, we had our growing giant and she was a loving addition to our brood. As she rounded the 2 year mark she started to mature a bit and was a lot easier to handle. We could relatively easily take her on walks and hiking with the family. It was a lot more fun to have a dog that could be a more active part in our family. With her growing maturity, she turned into the guard dog I had envisioned all along. If you didn’t have permission to come near my wife she wasn’t having it! Sometimes she wasn’t even real keen on my getting to close, it was a bit of a game but she watched anyone that came near her! We chose to let her stay in another room when most visitors came so they wouldn’t feel intimidated by the brute!

 

   I’ve mentioned in past posts that she had a favorite place she loved… It turned out it was my favorite place too, the BOL (Bug Out Location). She absolutely loved going with us to the place in the country! She quickly earned off leash privileges and could run to her hearts content. We spent nearly every other weekend there and it just isn’t the same without her…

 

   This is where our story really begins, the BOL. Just like many parts of the country, ticks are present in our area! Each spring and summer I would have to pull ticks off her or at least check her good when we got back toSeattle. You know, not a big deal and we did use the advantix or some other name brand product to keep the occurrences and volume of bugs down. Well, I eventually as in after she began to get sick, realized that I hadn’t been diligent in my application of the tick juice the previous summer tick season?

 

   It wasn’t until around November that she started to exhibit symptoms of being sick. It started with her limping a little when she walked. It was just barely noticeable if you happened to be really watching for it. I let her go for a few weeks in the hopes that it was a strain or something but it just continued to get worse. By the end of November she was having trouble standing up. Her hind end appeared to have a partial paralysis… The vet wasn’t able to tell what was wrong and continued to require more and more tests to come to only slightly more conclusive answers… Any know what those tests cost? I was pulled between giving the vet card blanche to “possibly” save our beloved dog and keep up on the household bills that we were struggling with that particular winter… Those decisions sound a lot easier when you’re not actually facing them!

 

   To make a fairly long story shorter, we ran test after test and eventually got the answer – kind of! Our dog had contracted “Salmon Poisoning”, I know, right? Apparently, the typical way that a dog would get this bacteria would be from eating raw salmon but our dog never had the opportunity to taste the delicacy… The other even more rare way to contract this horrible stuff is via our friend the tick! We had our culprit, after spending multiple thousands of dollars we had found the issue but the prognosis’ wasn’t as easy… We got the final verdict that after watching our 100 pound friend wither to 64 pounds and seeing her suffer as the sickness caused her face to bleed from every orifice including eye’s and ears… The vet said we MIGHT be able to stabilize her and get her semi healthy again but no guarantees? Very disappointing to say the least! She suffered for months as they tried to find some medication that she would respond to but nothing stopped the bacteria for long. Any improvements were followed by another down turn in short order…

 

  With great sadness and not a few tears we had to say goodbye to girl. Looks sappy on the movies, everybody blubbering over a stupid dog but in person it is very different… We were those saps blubbering over the stupid dog!

 

   We haven’t filled that vacancy in our home yet and it’s been nearly a year since we had to let her go… In the near future I will be asking all of you to give me your suggestions on what dog breed would be a good consideration. I’m pretty set on getting another Rottweiler but have seen a breed of Doberman pincher that looks like a candidate as well – The Gladiator Doberman, same beautiful dog, only larger than the version we normally would see around! Nothing is firm on when we will be entering the “dog owner” world again but it will happen and I hope you guys will help me make the best decision!

 

R I P – B O D

 

 

Prepper