Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - My Tragic Loss! | Clutterbug Podcast # 160

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Today's podcast is going to be a little different. I'm sharing the story of how our family dog, Oscar, died very suddenly. Was it an accident? Was it neglect? Was it natural causes?    #crimepodcast #pets #whodidit  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, clutterbugs, welcome back to the clutterbug podcast. Today we're going to be talking about my dog, Oscar. And before you completely click out of this podcast, I promise you this will be an interesting listen. Trigger warning, it's also going to be really sad. But this is something that's happening in my life right now. And I'm just shocked by what's going on. So I wanted to just share this with you and let you come. up with your own interpretation of what you think happened. So I'm going to try to be as

unbiased as possible, share this insane story with you, and you can come to your own conclusion. A week and a half ago, my dog Oscar passed away really, really suddenly. And the circumstances like around his death are just bonkers to me. And I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around it. To me, wholeheartedly, it feels like murder. And I know that sounds crazy. Listen, I'm not some insane person who thinks of their dog as a human, but he is part of my family. And I love him and I miss him. And the way that he was taken from us feels so wrong and so crazy. And other people agree. And that makes me feel a little bit better. But I wanted to share this story with you because there might be something I'm missing.

There might be another side to this. And I'm going to try to be, I'm just going to share the facts. We're just, let's just jump in. Let's just jump right into the facts. We've had Oscar Meyer Weiner for almost 10 years. We got him as a puppy in June of 2013. And he was born March 5th. So he's almost 10 years old.

We've had him since he was little. And he's just the sweetest, most energetic, crazy dog. has super separation anxiety though and always have, that's my fault. I suckyed him. I took him everywhere. I work from home. And so anytime I would even leave the room, he would get really upset and he would follow me. He'd wait for me.

He'd wait at the back door. And so traveling when you have a dog that has separation anxiety is always stressful as a pet owner. You want to make sure they're happy. You feel bad leaving them, but you can't always take them with you. And so we were so blessed to find a kennel that was an open kennel, which means he's not kept in a cage. The dogs aren't kept in a cage the whole time. And they're allowed to play with other dogs in a really big open setting. And we heard about this kennel when Oscar was just about a year old and he's gone to them dozens of times.

I'm not going to name names of this kennel. I don't want them getting any hate. We don't really know what happened. But I wanted to give you this sort of backstory leading up to how much I love this kennel and how amazing they have been for my dog. There have been a few times where that kennel was full and we took him to our veterinarian to board and another kennel to board. And every time Oscar has suffered from diarrhea. He's gotten really sick and upset because he hates being in a cage. And so this wonderful kennel knew that and wouldn't put him in a cage.

cage to sleep at night. They would let him kind of go on the couch or like wherever he wanted to sleep so that he wasn't stressed out and he didn't get really sick. And I've, I've been gone for a long period of time and they've watched him for up to two weeks before and short periods of time, like a weekend here or a couple of days over the holidays. But every year, at least twice or three times a year for the past nine years, this kennel has watched our dog. And they're so amazing if he ever wasn't feeling well or was like maybe not eating they would always call my cell phone and just let me know like hey he's seeming a little off what should we do do you want us to take him to the vet they've always been really great at contacting me anytime he's even remotely a little bit different

than his normal self and so this is why what happened is so crazy to me so let's jump into the story Abby had a hockey tournament and I wanted to go and Izzy wanted to go our whole family like the five of us. We were going to go to a hockey tournament. It's about four hours away. And so I called the kennel last minute because this was the last minute decision for all of us to go to see if they could take Oscar. They said they were full but he was small so they would make room for him. And I remember gathering up all his stuff. I told him where we were going just the name of this place.

He like spins and jumps and does circles. And the day before we took him, we had taken him to the dog park and he was active and running. Like, he is so crazy this dog. He's so full of life. And he hadn't changed. I hadn't seen any signs. I'm leading up to what's happening here. So as I'm packing up his stuff, I looked through his food cover. He's a bit of a spoiled baby, okay? So I fed him wet food. It's called Caesar's wet food. And a little bit of it. dry food and a lot of people food of being honest he likes to eat all right he takes after his mother and so i remember i only had five wet foods left and the hockey tournament went until saturday i was dropping him off thursday but if they won i would be not picking him up until sunday morning so i knew that he

was one food short so i fed him in the morning i made him scrambled eggs the thursday morning because I knew he was going to be extra hungry and I fed him extra food and then brought only five wet foods and some dry food for him to have. So he would have one Thursday night at the kennel, one Friday morning at the kennel, one Friday evening at the kennel, and then Saturday morning, and then he'd have one Saturday evening, and that was it. None left. So he wouldn't have any for Sunday if we had to stay, but we were planning on being back by noon at the very latest. So he was only skipping breakfast, which wasn't a huge deal. And he had dry food that he could have eaten if he was really hungry. So I take him at 4.30 to the kennel after I'm done work on Thursday,

and he is so excited to go. They meet me in the parking lot like they always do. When I pull up the long driveway, they took his leash, they greeted him. He was jumping and happy and excited. And we wave goodbye. I've been to this kennel so many times, and they've been so amazing. We don't sign anything, we just drop the leash, wave goodbye, and off we go. Which is why it was very surprising when Saturday morning I got a call from my local vet. And this wasn't the kennel that called, this is his veterinarian office saying that they received a strange call from the kennel asking if Oscar could be transferred there to stay there for the remainder of his stay because they said, he wasn't feeling well. I immediately called the kennel. I hung up from the vet and I called the kennel back.

And I said, is Oscar, okay? I just got a call from the vet that you want to send him there. And they called me. And they said, oh, well, he doesn't look like he's feeling the best. He's looking really lethargic. We opened his cage this morning and he was covered in vomit and diarrhea. And I immediately was like, why was he in a cage? He never is in a cage there. But I said, well, is he okay? She said, oh, well, we gave him a bath and he laid down and he's not really being very energetic. So I said, please, just take him to the vet. I'm four hours away. I'll come, but just take him to the vet.

I had signed paperwork that we guaranteed up to $10,000 vet bills. So it wasn't about the money. They knew that legally we had to pay for any vet bills, but they said they were understaffed and couldn't take him to the vet right now. There was no one to drive him. So I immediately hung up and called my mother-in-law and said, listen, I'm four hours away. You might have to go get Oscar. I'm not sure what's going on with him.

I'm going to just, I want to give you a heads up. So if you have to run out the door, you're going to run out the door. And then I called my vet and said, can I take Oscar to you? Like he's not feeling well. I don't know what's going on, but he's lethargic. Can we have someone bring him to you? and they told me that they were closing in an hour, and so I had to go to the emergency vet.

I called back this kennel and told them that he would have to go to the emergency vet, and if no one could drive, I could have my mother-in-law call, but I wanted to know how he was doing. I wanted an update. And mind you, this is within 10 minutes of me first calling them. And remember, they never called me to tell me that he wasn't feeling well, and they never called me or any of the emergency contacts the day before we had heard nothing just

they had called the vet to transfer to try to transfer him to a different kennel without contacting us which is strange you guys so i called back they said he's still looking weak he's looking like he's not feeling well so i asked if they could facetime me him so i could see him for myself now by this point I already could tell something was really wrong. So my husband was with me. My daughter was on the ice and I said, I'm leaving. I'm leaving. I sense that something's really wrong.

And I want to get home to him as soon as possible. So we actually jumped in the van, left my husband and daughter in a different city four hours away. And Milo, my son and Izzy, my daughter, we jumped in the van and we're driving home while on speakerphone. And I asked to FaceTime him. So I'm in the van and they, they FaceTime me, and he's having a seizure. Like, he's, it's, it's an obvious seizure.

And they even recognize that he's having a seizure while FaceTiming me. And they asked if he'd ever have a seizure before. Like, no, he's never even been sick ever. Like, this is crazy. And I begged them again, I'm like, take him to the vet. Please, I'll pay. I don't care what it costs. Like drive.

And they told me again that they couldn't. So I hung up, I called my mother-in-law and asked her to race there to pick him up to take him to the emergency vet. Now, my mother-in-law lives 30 minutes from this kennel, and it's then another 30-minute drive to the vet. So she gets to the kennel, they put him in a cat carrier, she takes him to the vet, and I hear nothing. And I'm driving on the highway, and I'm calling everybody. I'm calling the kennel. They're not answering. I'm calling my mother-in-law.

She's not answering. I'm calling my husband he's not answering. Finally, I get a call back from my husband who tells me not to panic. But he spoke to the vet. They didn't want to call me while I was driving with kids in the car. But by the time Oscar had got to the vet, the emergency vet, he was brain dead. And he had had multiple seizures in the car with my mother-in-law on the way. and he was brain dead.

His eyes weren't responding to light. The vet had asked my husband what they wanted to do. And my husband knew what the answer is, whatever it takes. Spend whatever. They were like, this is going to be expensive. I don't know if we can help him. And our response was, do every test, spend everything that you can to see what's wrong and to see if he can get better. Now, I have to.

to I guess I skipped apart. When I was calling and saying like this isn't normal, the kennel had told me that they thought that he swallowed a piece of a toy that I had given him. So I had dropped him off with treats, five foods, dry food, and a big scarf, I guess you'd call it, like a rag that I tie that I put treats in. So I tie a knot, I tuck treats, I tie a knot, I tuck treats, I tie a knot. This helps him kind of with anxiety when he's going to sleep. He's always had this. I saw it on YouTube. And so I was devastated thinking, oh my gosh, he ripped off a piece of this scarf and swallowed it and this is why he's dying.

And this is also what we told, well, what my mother-in-law told the vet that everyone thought he swallowed a piece of this scarf. So they're doing x-rays on his abdomen. They're spending time opening up this scarf, this rag, like looking if there's any pieces missing. doing a lot of tests looking for a bowel obstruction because this is kind of what we've been told is probably what's going on. But there was no pieces of the toy missing. There was nothing in his abdomen. And by the time I got to the vet four hours later, I go into the room to see him, you guys, he looked five pounds skinnier. He is not a big dog. He is not a big dog. He's a 20-pound dog to begin with.

He looked so thin. And he wasn't responding to me. He was panting heavily, but his eyes weren't moving. They were fixed. His muscles were all really stiff and, like, stuck straight out. Again, I don't want to make anyone sad, but I'm just telling you this is what I saw. And I immediately knew he was gone because there was no reaction to my voice and he's such a mommy's suck and I he looked, I knew he was gone and I wanted to end his suffering, but I also just

didn't understand why he looked so thin. It had been less than 36 hours since I dropped off my fat, plump, healthy, wet-nosed, like tongue-wagging, insane ball of energy dog. Now this looked like a completely different dog. So thin. So just, his eyes were sunk. It was very, it was, I just, I, I, I was blown away. So I asked the vet, like, how, why does he look so thin? This is crazy. And she said, he didn't have a bowel obstruction. He didn't have anything in his stomach at all, including water. They couldn't even get a urine sample from his kidneys, and his sodium level was off the chart, so high they had to dilute it to get a reading. Now, I don't know what this means, but she explained to me it was severe dehydration, severe dehydration, which is why he looked so thin. The water had been sucked from his fat, from his skin, from his muscles, from his eyes, everything.

Like he was so dehydrated that that caused sodium levels to spike, that that caused severe seizures over and over again. And by this point, he was brain dead. And even if they rehydrated him with IVs and all that, which they didn't do because they were looking for a blockage and all these other things, it would just flush that sodium right to his brain and there was really no chance of him coming back. So I decided to put him down. But the whole time, I just kept asking, how can a dog get that dehydrated in two days? How is this possible that the kennel didn't notice that he was so thirsty? And the vet assured me that it must have been a pre-existing condition.

Maybe he had undiagnosed Addison's disease. Maybe he was dehydrated when I dropped him off. Maybe he had some sort of other thing going on that would cause this level of dehydration. But he was eating, eating more than ever, honestly, and drinking and going to the bathroom and doing. There was no indication of this. so I just knew that something felt wrong. But I loved this kennel so much, I didn't know what to think. And then why didn't they call me?

It just wasn't adding up. I went home without my dog. You know, I left. We were going to get him cremated. I was going to make the decisions about all of that stuff later when I stopped crying my face off. And I received a call later that night from the vet, who was amazing by the way i just have to say above and beyond and the veterinarian when she called me she was done work she called me from her house which i just had never heard of before and she said

to me can you see if oscar ate any of his food and i i just thought that was i was like what and she said i don't want to i'm just i have no way i have no proof of this, but I'm wondering if he was forgotten about in a cage. And the stress of that caused diarrhea and without access to food or water for those 36 hours. If he did have severe diarrhea from stress, which we know he's had in the past, that's the only thing she could think of to explain his symptoms. And so I didn't have his food because I didn't pick him up. from the kennel. My mother-in-law did. And I called her and I said, can you check and see if Oscar

has food left? He shouldn't have any. He shouldn't have any or maybe one, one wet food left because Saturday night they wouldn't have fed him. Or maybe even Saturday morning, right? He would have not been able to eat that because he wasn't feeling well. She looked in the bag and they were all there. And these are the type of foods that you have to peel the top off. You have to like peel the top of the food off to open it, which means he wasn't even offered food. They couldn't say it was because he wasn't hungry. They hadn't even open the top to offer it to him, which is so, so strange. And really, I called the vet back and said he hadn't eaten any of the food. She thanked me. and we hung up and I just thought oh my gosh did they I knew they were full did someone not only do they

have great staff but they have a lot of high school volunteers to get their high school hours that volunteer at this kennel they have a lot of pets not just dogs cats and birds and all sorts of things did someone Thursday not know that he doesn't like cages and he gets stressed and he gets really upset when he's put in the cage. Someone put him in a cage at bedtime, leave, and a new shift came in Friday, and they

didn't think to look. He was just literally forgotten about because they had so many dogs. And when I say so many dogs, we looked on their Facebook and on their website, and they have like, they take pictures and they post them. There was 30 dogs

at the time. 30. In a kennel that legally was only supposed to have 10. And so it was looking more and more like he was forgotten about for days in a cage, which also to me would explain, now again, I'm speculating. But why Saturday morning when they opened or found him that they didn't call us, that they kind of panicked, they bathed him? Right?

you see this dog and it's covered in diarrhea and vomit and it's having a seizure and you bath it? Or why they tried to call my vet to get my vet to take him. Now, he could have had a preexisting condition. We don't really know, which is why I'm so grateful for what the vet did next. The vet actually made a call to a provincial dog investigation. I didn't even know this was a thing, you guys. It's animal cruelty and animal welfare that is the attorney general. I may be saying the solicitor's general, something.

It's a government office that just investigates animal cruelty and animal neglect. And they called me on the Sunday. So the vet had called Saturday evening after I confirmed that Oscar hadn't had any food. She had made a call. And by Sunday, the investigation was underway. and the investigator on a Sunday, which I just think is crazy, called the emergency vet and got a court order Monday morning to raid the kennel for all of their information, picked up Oscar for a full autopsy.

The kennel had told them things that we could prove were not true. The kennel claimed that they called us immediately, and we said it was okay. We would come and get him, that as soon as they found, him like that, they called both myself and the emergency contact, which was Joe's mother-in-law, but we both submitted our phone records, which we were easy to get. And then because they were caught in a lie, the court order was to subpoena their phone records, which also shows they didn't call anyone except for the vet. And the vet, my vet, also wrote an affidavit saying that

The kennel had called and tried to pawn Oscar off on them, not to take them there for medical attention, but to have him finish his stay there for the remainder of Saturday, possibly till Sunday morning. And the vet was full, which is the only reason they didn't take them. And I'm so grateful that they did call me because they thought that that was a weird call to get from a kennel too. And so you can tell obviously what I think happened. I mean, I told you what I thought happened.

And we don't really know. And maybe we'll never know. There's no way to really prove. But I'm just, it's like a full crime investigation at this point, which I'd never heard of for a dog before. So the police have been involved and this government agency is involved. The vet's the vets involved. Oscar's going through an autopsy right now, full testing. All of their computers have been seized to go through.

and just make sure that they actually did have our phone number because now they're claiming when they got caught in the lie, then they changed their story to they didn't have our phone number. So they seized the computers to prove that they did have phone numbers. And I got to say, nothing's going to bring him back. And I'm sad because I know that this kennel loves animals and that they are good people and that they never, ever, ever would have heard Oscar on purpose, ever. And I know that this is going to hurt their business. Whatever the outcome is, I know they've, well, it's a full investigation.

There's probably some rules they're breaking. And I feel awful about that. But also, they shouldn't have had that many dogs. And something happened. Something happened and they mistakes. were made and we lost our family member because of it. And I wasn't about to call the police or the investigators. The veterinarian did that all on her own because she also saw that something just wasn't

adding up here. And so I'm going to keep you posted. It's going to be a few weeks before we get those results back. And this isn't something like I'm going to share with you and it's words of wisdom or something you can learn from this story. And yeah, it's a disturbing story. It gets me, even if this wasn't my dog, it's just a. so insane. And I'm not saying kennels are a bad place because, honestly, we've had the best,

most incredible experience up until now, but I wanted to share it with you because it's a big part of my life. And it's something that's consuming a lot of my thoughts. And I want to keep you posted because it's just not right. Something happened. And he was taken from us way too soon. and it's just sad so anyways i'm going to end this i don't have even a bright side to end this with you but you can come up with your own conclusion your own idea of what you think happened to oscar it is possible he had a pre-existing condition that we didn't know about that was maybe exacerbated is that the word made worse by his stress of being away from his owners or it's very possible he was put in a cage on Thursday night.

A shift change happened at the kennel, and he was forgotten about until he was discovered Saturday morning. You can be the judge. Thank you guys so much for listening, and I'll see you guys next time.