Medical Care for Sony

Sony is our five year old dachshund that we rescued less than two years ago. He’s brought so much joy and love into our lives since we first brought him home. He’s a super silly dog that loves the sunlight and being curled up under a blanket on the couch with us. We like to call him master of the puppy eyes and tell him how cute he is all the time. But these past few days we have been going through a very difficult time with our little guy. 

On Thursday, July 25th, we took Sony to his regular vet for an anal gland expression, since he had been scooting and just generally uncomfortable around his butt area. The vet wasn’t able to express much, but thought he should be fine. On the way home, we noticed he seemed to be pretty uncomfortable and acting a little out of the ordinary, and once we got home he quickly got worse. He started shivering, having diarrhea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and eventually had no energy to even leave his bed. 

We dropped him off at the vet on the morning of Friday, July 26th, where they did blood work and kept an eye on him. He had a high fever of 105 that they weren’t able to get down, his white blood cell count was very low, and he still wasn’t eating or drinking so they had started him on an IV. Friday evening when we went to go pick him up the vet recommended that he be rushed to emergency care to be monitored overnight.  All they could tell us was that he was a very very sick dog and they weren’t entirely sure what was going on. 


He was seen immediately at the emergency pet hospital on Friday night. After tests and x-rays, we found out that he could possibly have aspiration pneumonia that could have been caused by inhaling vomit. He was having trouble breathing and he spent several hours in an oxygen chamber with an IV. They gave him antibiotics, nebulizer treatments to help target the pneumonia, and kept monitoring him all night. The doctor was still extremely concerned about Sony and was not able to tell us what exactly was wrong with him, so we were transferred to see a specialist at a different pet hospital on the morning of Saturday, July 27th. 

On Saturday they immediately put Sony in the ICU. At this point they ran tests that confirmed he did have a severe case of aspiration pneumonia, but they were still unsure if this was the only cause of his symptoms and were monitoring him very closely until his vitals became more stable. Sony has been at this hospital ever since, but even with the incredible team of doctors and nurses, no one knows exactly what’s happening. He’s been staying in an oxygen tank, with no appetite for either food or water and still extremely lethargic. 

After speaking with his doctor on Sunday, July 28th, we were told he’s actually a lot worse than he was the previous day, and there are now a lot of new areas of concern for the doctor, like him not being able to walk correctly and maybe some sort of infection in his skin. Things are still very unclear. We were able to visit him and sit with him for a little while and we could just tell he definitely wasn’t doing well at all. His entire hind area is swollen and oozing fluid and he just looks like he’s in so much pain (as you can see in the most recent photo of him below). 


The bills have been quickly piling up to get Sony the immediate care that he needs and to keep him alive. He has been in an oxygen chamber, on IVs to sustain him, nausea medicine, antibiotics, etc. We just want our little guy to be healthy and back to his normal fun self. 

Please if you could find it in your heart to give, we would sincerely appreciate it. We were not expecting any of this to happen so suddenly. Our little guy means the world to us, and we just want him to be okay.

Thank you for reading.