Fifi – Rest in Peace

Today, our min-pin Fifi passed away.

Fifi came into our life shortly after our other dog Tootsie was tragically killed by a car. Holly’s reaction to Tootsie’s death was to get another dog very quickly. Within about a week she brought home a registered min-pin named Fifi. Things didn’t start off so well… Fifi didn’t like me at all! She would literally freak out and run at the sight of me. Once I had to catch her and put her in the back seat of the car, and before the drive was over she had crapped all over the back seat. She also escaped the house one day and disappeared into the neighborhood. Holly had to put up signs saying, “Missing Dog” and call this number if you find her. Surprisingly, one person did call and say, “Hey, I think your dog is hiding under my house.” Yes, she was hiding under there, and Holly somehow successfully coaxed her out.

But as time went by, a curious thing began to happen. Fifi slowly warmed up to me and eventually became more of a devoted follower in my footsteps then the other dogs. I could take her off-leash in the park and not worry about her running away. In fact, she would stick close by my side or would come running the moment I called her name.

Fif was fat. She would eat like she had been starved, gulping down food whole and gobbling it up before the other dogs could even sniff it. That’s rather typical of a miniature pincher breed, so I wasn’t surprised. But she slowly grew fatter and fatter. She was obviously overweight, but I didn’t know how to stop her from eating so much and so fast. One day, however, she began to lose weight. Holly noticed it too and said, “Fifi seems a little skinnier!” For awhile, we both thought that was pretty great, but she continued to lose weight faster and faster over a period of 2 to 3 weeks. I thought, hmmm, maybe this isn’t such a good thing. Maybe something is wrong?

We took her to the doctor and, sure enough, she had a problem. It was Pancreatitis which was causing a diabetic problem (eventually she would be diagnosed as having Cushing’s Disease). She had to immediately begin taking 2 injections of insulin per day. Somehow I became the one responsible for giving her injections each day, although Jose would also help at times. I think Holly just didn’t like the unpleasant part of wrangling the dog and sticking a needle in her butt. I didn’t particularly care for it either, but I just considered it a fact of life and another chore to do each day. Eventually, I got pretty good at it. There were still plenty of times where I didn’t find the right spot to inject the needle and Fifi would whip around and bite my hand.

Over the next few months, Fifi would go through bouts of being fine and healthy and her usually bitchy self, to being sick and vomiting and losing weight again. She would always recover, though, from any moment of sickness and life would go on. But one day she became sick again…vomiting, not eating…and making a pitiful whimpering sound that we’d never heard before. In my mind I thought, uh oh, she’s reached the end of her illness. Holly thought the same thing and took her to the veterinarian. Sure enough, she had passed the point of no return. There would be no recovery this time. We made the decision to have her put to sleep.

Euthanized by the Heights Hospital for Animals on July 14th, Fifi quietly and peacefully went to sleep forever. Goodbye Fifi, you certainly brought some laughs and charm and drama into our life, and you will be missed.