We have had a traumatic week this week. It all started early on Sunday morning. Amber was the first one up. She was up early and went downstairs to eat breakfast. The rest of us were mostly asleep still. She runs back up the stairs crying something has happened to Moonlight (Paige's gerbil).
So we all quickly jumped out of bed. It was easy to see that something was definitely wrong! She wasn't moving her back legs...it looked like she was paralyzed on her bottom half. Amber had found her on the bottom stair on the first floor. She lives in Paige and Amber's room in on the second floor in a cage. We could not figure out how she had gotten out and made her way downstairs. I had been up and let our dog Rex out about an hour earlier and hadn't seen anything. After interviewing everyone and not figuring out the mystery, we turned out attention to helping Moonlight be comfortable. We were pretty confident that she had broken her back and were pretty sure that there probably wouldn't be much we could do for her. Paige stayed home from church and cried and took care of her. We thought perhaps she would pass away quickly, but she didn't and it was just heart breaking to see her suffering. This was just the beginning!
The next event happened as we got ready to go visit my parents in Strawberry this weekend. We decided to take both Rex (our dog) and Moonlight with us. Saturday morning my parents had a missionary meeting that they were speaking at and Dave and I decided to go on our weekly run. We thought all would be well with our kids while we were gone. After all they seem very responsible, most of the time, except when they decide to do some strange things, which I guess is what happened this day. When we got back we had another traumatic animal experience.
My kids have made friend with my parents neighbor, Myndi. They go help work with the horses, cleaning etc. and then she will give them a ridding lesson. Well she had a couple of big, friendly (to kids) dogs along with her 3 horses and lama. Well, from the best we could figure Amber decided (on her own, and nothing was holding her back) to go and visit the neighbor and see if she had any work for her. Lindsay decided to take Rex outside and Paige thought she was just out in the front. She on the other hand had decided to take Rex on a walk to the neighbors. I think that she just thinks since she loves animal that all animals must love each other too. To make a long story short (and because we don't really know exactly what happened...a five year old is not the best at details all the time) Rex was attacked by Myndi's dog.
The skin was not broken, but Rex was traumatized and wouldn't walk on one leg. He hardly ate or drank anything for almost 24 hours. Mom has some other neighbors that are EMT's and work with animals as well, so we called and she took a look at Rex and said that she thought we should give it a little time. It didn't look like his back was hurt and because he was holding up his leg, not dragging it it probably wasn't broken.
This a picture of Rex just shortly after the attack, we just wanted to make him comfortable.
Below is Rex this morning, feeling a little better, even getting around a little bit!
The last straw (at least for Paige) was when we just couldn't stand seeing Moonlight suffer any more, so we asked the husband of the woman who looked at Rex and is a dentist, if he could help us humanely help out Moonlight who was suffering more each day. So he helped put her to sleep on Saturday night. Paige cried and cried and is still trying to come to grips with losing her friend and companion. In the end, we had an opportunity to talk to our kids about being responsible and thinking before acting, and all about the plan of salvation and what we believe happens when we die. It was an emotional, learning week!
