Lily will go down in our family history as the one we lost. Lily came to us as a foster after Hurricane Katrina. She had it rough, stuck in her family home during the storm and for a few weeks after, a bloat-torsion episode, bloat-torsion surgery, this girl knew about stress and it showed. She was people aggressive, especially man aggressive, dog aggressive, cat aggressive, food aggressive, plane, helicopter, and tree aggressive. No you read right...plane, helicopters AND trees. Now in her defense she only attacked trees when she heard gunshots.

Think that one over, Cesar Millan. Its a head scratcher!

So like I said, she knew about stress...first hand. She was one big bundle of stress. Plain and simple had she gone anywhere else to foster she would have been euthanized simply for public safety. But Lily had something... a quality of attention that made you think you were the only person in the world who mattered. When she was alone with her people she was absolutely the most joyful dog ever. It was like Christmas Morning. You just knew it was all worth it to get through the day when she looked at you with those eyes of hers.

Okay, I hear you...how on earth with 2 kids, 5 Great Danes, 3 other dogs, 8 cats and so on did we keep Lily from killing everything? That is a good question. ...Diligence is the only answer I have got. We just kept seeking a solution.  When she met the kids we told them to ignore her and she was just fine after a few scary moments. We tried to crate her the first night but it was a disaster. So we took turns sleeping in the car with her the first few nights because we could not figure out how to get her into the house. We spent our waking hours with her training, playing and loving her and when the other dogs had to come out for a potty break we sat with Lily in the air-conditioned car where she felt safe. While she tried to eat my doggie family through the tinted windows.  Sometimes I cried. Finally on the third day I was so exhausted...exhaustion can be a huge motivator...I tried the colossal crate again. She went so nuts that her feet swelled up double from bashing them against the crate. Her abdomen swelled up double too as if to bloat, she threw up, she burped, the swelling went down. Thank goodness her stomach was empty.  Luckily we had a squeaky toy in the bed, she stepped on it, it squeaked, she grabbed it and squeaked it in her mouth....Salvation!

She settled down to suck on the squeaky baby. She just mouthed it quietly until something moved. Then she went crazy again. Still she was crated. And as long as we zip tied the crate all around and had extra clamps for the door and plenty of squeaky toys we knew we had turned a corner...she was inside the house where we could help her. We tried soothing music, giving her calming herbs, we trained her 4 hours a day. We exposed her to one dog or cat at a time. While she was crated. She wanted to kill them all! But she soon figured out how to be calm in her crate more and more. We trained all our dogs to move to the far side of the room on command so Lily could be moved to the outside. We devised a system of warning to let everyone know Lily was outside.

Lily began to enjoy a more normal life, more training, more understanding that her people were not in need of protecting so she did not have to go into Rambo mode every time someone new showed up. We switched her to raw food and she calmed down a little bit more. We gave her messages and she calmed down a little bit more. There were many baby steps like this, it was progress.

Her owner wanted her back, we knew this from the beginning we just never knew when it would happen. We had good conversations over the phone and 8 months after she came  he called with the news. He was ready for Lily to come home. He would be here to get her at the end of the week.  I had counseled from the first that it was best to get her spayed, and her advancing age ( she was 7) was a factor to getting right on that, but she came with canine flu and she was recovering from her bloat surgery at the same time, then she went into season. Hoping to do the spay at the lowest point in her cycle we put her surgery off. So it turned out that her spay was set to go off just days before she was to go home. Her owner said he could handle getting the stitches removed and said go ahead.  Just for the record I don't allow injectable cocktail anesthetics to be used on any of my dogs, its either propofal and sevoflurane/Isoflurane gas or the dog gets masked down with the Sevo or Iso gas until they can be tubed and then its Sevo or Iso all the way. It makes for a very expensive spay or neuter by its so worth it.  All went well and Lily walked to my suburban and let the vet help lift her in. We were so proud! She laid quietly enjoying the ride home. Within 45 minutes of coming home she was dead. She labored a breath and with my husband holding her tight she did not take another. We were a wreck. I don't know how to think of losing Lily without crying. I called her owner and told him. I dreaded the call. Losing a dog is horrible, but losing one that was going back to her owner is just beyond horror. 

We had a necropsy done the next day, and I will tell you all...Do Not Attend a necropsy on a dog you love. You might think you can handle it and you might handle it fine. Take my word for it, You Do Not want those memories. But I felt I must attend. Lily was my life's work for the last 8 months, and she was my families' dear, troubled friend. I owed it to her and to her owner to find out why she died.

In the end my vet and I found out very little, she did have an abdominal bleed, but not from the ovarian stumps as might be suspected, Nothing large and obvious could be found. So we suspect it was a small bleed that grew over time, one that would normally have sealed itself, but didn't. When she lost too many platelets to clot the bleeder it was just a matter of time. Lily was heartworm negative,  Erlickia negative, and her bloodwork previous to surgery was clean. So answers are hard to find.

This webpage is the first time I have publicly spoken of Lily's death. I  worried going public would cause a backlash against spay/neuter.  And it still may, but not to speak of her death means not to be able to speak of her life and she was a dog that taught us so much I must share her story.  If you chose to spay/neuter your Great Danes please do so at the appropriate age. 18-24 months. Not as young puppies because Great Danes need their hormones to grow strong and healthy. Lily was too old for surgery, I didn't think she was since she had gone through so much surgery just 8 months before and came through it. I felt she was healthier, stronger and better supplemented at the time of her spay than any time in her life. This clouded my judgment as to her age being a threat.

 We are thankful for all Lily taught us about aggressive behavior, and about replacing aggressiveness with tolerance in a dog so stressed as Lily.

What we learned from Lily made us better doggie parents.