The wife had some friends stay the night last night. They came down from Vancouver, BC, and we went to dinner last night. After we got back, they played Scrabble (is there a more boring game out there?), and I got busy with my homework.
While we were out at dinner, we got a call from the woman with whom we agist our alpacas. One of our little ones is sick, and she didn't think he'd make it through the night and wanted to know how we wanted to handle it. We decided not to call in a vet, but to ride it out to see if he'd pull through. One of the sad facts of raising animals is that you have to decide how to spend your money. Vets can be pretty damn expensive, and the treatments even more so. Do we spend a small fortune on an animal you won't recoup your costs? In the end, we chose not to call in a vet. We got a call this morning from our agister; he was still alive, and we decided to take a wait and see approach.
I just got another call. He's still alive, but not doing well. He was up walking around earlier, but he was talking short steps and walking in circles. His breathing is shallow and the agister is certain he's gone blind (hence the walking in circles). She's had other animals who have not been in as bad a shape as he's in and none have survived. Based on that, she's certain he won't recover, so we've decided to euthanize him at 3 pm (if he hasn't passed by then). They will then perform a necropsy, and send the samples to a lab that can do a more detailed analysis of the cause of the death.
Not much fun for anyone involved, least of all the poor cria.
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