Zora

As many of you know, our tenants are also taking care of our dog, Zora. It worked out really well for us that they were willing to do so and from what we can tell they love her a lot and are taking great care of her. They've called us a couple of times with questions and sent us pictures of her from time to time. Saturday night they called us to say she had vomited several times and did we want them to take her to the vet. We said they could wait till the morning so the next day they took her to Dove Lewis, the animal hospital in Portland, where she got some anti-nausea medication. But by Monday morning she was still throwing up so they brought her back and had to get x-rays taken. The doctor said it looked like she had eaten something that was now lodged in her intestine, and would need surgery to remove it - at a cost of $2700 - $4500. We were kind of stunned. On the one hand, we love Zora so much and we don't really feel like you can put a price on that. On the other hand, we have talked in the past about how much we would spend on her if she ever got seriously ill and we both felt that after all, she is a dog, not a person, and we would not be comfortable spending huge sums of money on her medical care. I know some people may have strongly different opinions about that, but that was our thinking. So we decided to call our regular vet, actually it's just a clinic that we usually take her to. They said they could do the surgery for $400 - $1000. I have absolutely no idea why there would be such a huge range in price, but we were both relieved that we wouldn't have to decide whether or not to do the surgery. $1000 is still a lot for us, but it's manageable - $4000 really was not.

Anyway Zora was supposed to go in for surgery this morning, so I'm hoping to hear from our tenants some time this afternoon or evening. We'll let you know how she's doing when we hear.