Mable
Mable is a sweet 12 year old blue Doberman living in Woodstock, GA with her owner, Nancy. For the last
few months, Mable had experienced unexplained vomiting and weakness. Here is Mable's story in
Nancy's words:
"My name is Nancy. I live in Woodstock, GA with my boyfriend of 10 years, Chris, and our 2 rescue
dobes. Louis is approximately 4.5 years old & is a black & tan w/natural ears & tail. Mable is a 12
year old Blue Dobe w/natural ears and a docked tail. We rescued Mable a little over 6 years ago from
a young girl we knew. Meredith was 18 years old and lived in an apartment with Mable. Like so many
other kids her age, she adopted a dog w/o any real understanding of the commitment & responsibility
she was undertaking. She wasn't home all that often and rarely seemed to take the time to walk Mable
or let her out to use the bathroom. One afternoon, her apartment building caught fire and due to the
damage, she was forced to move back in with her mother. Her mother did not want Mable, so when we
heard, we immediately told Meredith that we would be happy to take her in. I had just bought my first
house and the back yard was large & completely fenced in.
Mable loved her back yard. She loved basking in the sun and barking at the pesky squirrels that
taunted her from the tree limbs high above. October 10, 2000, at this point Mable had been with us
for roughly 9 months. I had flown in on the red eye from a long weekend in Las Vegas with one of my
oldest friends. I went straight to work from the airport after getting absolutely no sleep the night
before. By the time I got home I was so tired it was all I could do to eat dinner. The sheets for
our bed were in the dryer but were not done yet, so Chris & I both sat down in the living room on the
couch to watch some tv and wait for the sheets to dry. Luckily we both fell asleep on the couch, a
move that saved our lives, literally! Approximately 1 hour later I woke up, groggy & confused. The
house was filled with dense, thick smoke and I could just make out the shadows of the flames in the
next room dancing on the wall. Panicked, I yelled for Chris & we crawled to the door. As soon as we
got outside we both froze as it dawned on us that Mable was still inside. While I ran to a neighbors
to summon help, Chris tried to go back inside to find Mable, but the fire was too large by this point.
We just knew that Mable was dead and the only thing I could think of was that I had failed her. About
30 - 45 minutes into the fire, one of the firemen came up to us and told us that Mable was alive.
Apparently she had instinctively known to go downstairs, she had never been downstairs, was afraid of
the stairs. He found her huddled at the bottom landing and apologized b/c after scooping her up (she
weighs about 90 lbs) as he was running to get her out of the house he tripped over something and she
flew out of his arms and ran toward the woods. Anyway, long story short, the poor dog has lived
through 2 fires. The house was a total loss, we lost everything, but I didn't care. We were alive
and that was all that mattered. We rebuilt the home and moved back in 8 months later. As our 1st
anniversary of the fire drew near, we found Louis at the local shelter & adopted him.
In November of last year, with Christmas just around the corner, the company I worked for cut most of
the administrative positions, including the office manager, me. Two days after Christmas Mable
started to throw up. I took her to the vet the next morning, preparing myself for a cancer
diagnosis. They took x-rays and ran blood & urine tests but could find nothing. She spent the rest
of the day at the vet's hooked up to fluids. When we picked her up that evening we were hopeful that
it was over, but the vet said that if she continued to vomit that night, that she would need to
undergo exploratory surgery the next day. The bill for the 1 day of tests & fluids came to roughly
$850.00 and we were told that the average cost for exploratory surgery was around $1,200.00.
Unfortunately, 15 minutes after getting her home, she vomitted again & we were up all night w/constant
vomitting. We took her back to the vet in the morning, but did not authorize the surgery. She spent
the day hooked up to fluids again at a cost of $100.00 and that evening when we picked her up the vet
sat us down and said that we needed to take her home and if she continued to get sick we needed to
decide whether to let her perform the surgery, with no guarantees of finding anything, or we needed to
"put her down". While checking out we discovered that she had 9 other exploratory surgeries scheduled
for the next day & we felt like she wanted to jump to that before exhausting all other avenues. This
combined with several other things made us extremely uncomfortable with either Mable or Louis being
seen by this vet clinic ever again. I didn't leave her side for the next 9 days desperately trying to
come up with a solution. She threw up on average 10-12 times a day and I was about at the end of my
ropes. I got on the internet searching for clues when it dawned on me that the University of Georgia
had a fabulous vet school and that as a young girl, one of our cats had to go through extensive chemo,
but lived for another 6 years. The vet school required a referral from our vet and luckily I was able
to procure one through one of the other vets in the office. I knew that exploratory surgery might
become necessary, but I was confident that UGA would exhaust all other options before opting to open
her up. Mable spent 9 days at the UGA vet hospital in ICU. They ran so many tests, and eventually
said that as they were still unable to find anything (Mable was still not able to keep food down) that
they would like to do an ultrasound or endoscopy (I'm sorry I don't recall the name of the procedure at
the moment) and or exploratory surgery. After performing both procedures they said that Mable showed
absolutely no sign of any type of cancer but that unfortunately they still could not tell me what was
causing this. They had to insert a J tube in order to get food far enough through her stomach to
where she would not throw it up. They had also put her on phenobarbital to try and combat her now
excessive salivation. After 10 days in ICU Mable was discharged with a diagnosis of irritable bowel
syndrome a food allergy and although no signs of a parasite they wanted to treat her for 1 just to be
on the safe side. So we brought Mable home with a prescription for the phenobarb - 2 tablets per
day - and a limited ingredient diet of IVD brand food. In the meantime, I had done a little research
and found a holistic veterinarian, Dr. Susan Wynn, who agreed to take on both Mable & Louis as new
clients. I have been extremely happy with Dr. Wynn and didn't even find out until after she saw Mable
that Dr. Wynn has written several books & speaks throughout the WORLD about holistic veterinary
medicine. After seeing Mable & reviewing all of her records, Dr. Wynn added that she felt like Mable
was perhaps in the beginning stages of Wobbler's as well. Everything is going fine and then about a
month after bringing her home from the hospital, Mable suddenly began to constantly vomit again. This
episode lasted for 7 days and then just as suddenly as it came on, it went away. Now, although Dr.
Wynn is convinced that UGA's diagnosis is incorrect, we are not sure what our next step is. She has
been consulting with Mable's vet at UGA and I have noticed more prominent signs of Wobblers. At this
point the total we have spent is approximately $8,000.00 and her monthly food/medicine bill is roughly
$125.00. This doesn't even include any vet visits. And while I was glad that I was able to devote
myself to her through this rough time, I am desperately looking for work and as everyone knows,
although I am grateful to be receiving unemployment, you can't survive off of it and to top everything
Chris is a contractor who started a job around Thanksgiving for a "friend" of his and b/c it was a
"friend" that wasn't going to be able to pay him until the end of the job, he spent the last 2-3
months completely renovating this house for his friend using his money and just last week we were f
orced to file a lien against his home as Chris still hasn't been paid for the job.”
The cumulative cost of Mable's accupuncture and chiropractic treatments as well as her medications and
prescription food are running over $300 per month, and as you can see, Nancy and Chris are running out of money.
You can mail us a donation or use the
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for Mable. We thank you for any help that you can offer - every penny counts!
