Chapter Seventeen After the Burial

I am numb. It is five in the evening, Linda is preparing dinner and I’m not even hungry.

My mind is still trying to comprehend she is gone. Most of the evening, I have tears coming down my checks. Linda tries to console me. When we put Copper down twelve years ago, I cried carrying her from the vet’s office and throughout the time we buried her. She was a great dog, but she was really Jake’s dog and I didn’t have the same emotional attachment to her as I had with Tova.

Tova was my dog.

Two days later, her vet called me. “Joe, I want you to Google something. He spells it for me. After you do, call me back so we can talk.”

I log onto Google search and type in, “Cryptococcosis.”

My first reaction is, “Oh My God.”

In short form, Cryptococcosis is a fungal disease that affects the respiratory tract, eyes, skin and the central nervous systems of dogs. The fungus exists in the environment and in tissues in a yeast form. The fungus is found in soil and fowl droppings. Transmission is by inhalation of the spores or the contamination of open wounds. The infection first shows up as lesions on the lungs, facial regions, legs and cerebral cavities. It rapidly spreads to their central nervous system and eyes. Organs may be involved and if the brain is involved the dog will show signs of circling, behavior changes, accompanied by sneezing and coughing, and in some cases blindness. Tova showed some of these signs.

After sitting almost motionless in front of my monitor for a few minutes, I printed out what the Google report stated about fungal diseases. As painful as this was to digest, it made logical sense to me. Being a hunting dog, Tova frequently had her nose to the ground.

I called the vet. His office said he would call as soon as he was through with a patient.

Ten minutes later, he calls. “What did you find?”

“It’s hard to believe what I just read.”

“Joe, I’m sorry, I’ve never seen or heard of this before and neither has my associate or the internal medicine vet Tova saw. We are all shocked. I’ve been talking to all of my fellow vets and they’re never heard of anything like this. I’ve searched the internet since we put her down and just by accident I found this. I really believe this is what she picked up. She lasted fifteen months after contracting it because she was so healthy.”

He ends the conversation as sympathetically as he can. I still can’t believe a beautiful healthy dog died from some damn fungus from bird droppings.

My next concern is to call my vet in California who takes care of my horses on my daughter’s property. I’ve seen bird droppings dried on the corral rails before and I want to know if we could lose a horse.

When he gets the message he returns my call and says, he’s never heard of a case in California.