"If they make it past their first year, they usually last fifteen or more."
What she meant was that Russells, in the salad days of their impetuous youth, can and do end their lives in sad and silly ways. Like the dog she bred that launched itself out of the window of a moving car to chase a squirrel. Or the one that disappeared down a deep hole in pursuit of something and never came out again.
So forewarned, we tried as hard as we could to protect Molly from her number one risk factor: herself.
That left the number two risk factor: us.
Before Molly had completed her first year, either directly or indirectly through the actions of her two protectors, Molly was infested with mange, poisoned and clobbered with a stick. None of these were intentional of course, but still.
The mange infestation happened like this.
Russells have a very robust constitution. From the time she was eight weeks old, Molly felt solid, strong, sturdy. But, she was a regular little dog in that she needed her various immunizations against dread diseases. After she'd had her second round of shots for kennel cough et cetera, I noticed that a small patch on her left side was losing hair and looked oddly dirty.
It was demodex mange, a non-contageous critter that always lives on dogs, and takes its opportunities as they arise when the dog's immune system is weakened - as it would be say, after a series of shots.
Dispositionally inclined to be suspicious of western medicine for both dogs and humans, I eschewed for a long time the truly shocking-sounding treatments proposed by Molly's usual veterinarian.
I took instead the advice of a naturopath vet I went to go see in East York, and made with my own hands out of ground lamb and other goodies putatively immune-system-boosting food for Molly.
Here's a picture of her licking the spoon.
The alternative approach did not work all that well. Molly grew weary of the home-made food in less than a month and the supplemental "healthy powder" I added to it had sub-optimal effects (more about which later). Plus, the mange didn't budge.
After another negotiation with her vet - whose first offer had been to dip Molly in a vat of toxins for the going rate of about $600 - we experimented with a cheap ($18), long-term (6 weeks) therapy of orally administered micro-doses (3 ml at a time) of a treatment normally used on sheep to treat demodex. It took every last drop of the medicine and every day of the six weeks, but the course of treatment worked. The mange on her side went away. She did carry to her dying day, however, a small patch of the same stuff on the end of her docked tail.
Keeping Molly healthy was not as challenging as keeping her entertained, more about which in the next post.
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