My big girl

My wife and I rescued Ashley about 6 years ago from an organization in Manchester, NH. She was a dead dog walkin' at a kill shelter in Ashtabula county Ohio. Several volunteers got a van of these guys together and drove them from Ohio to New Hampshire where they would be spared. Since that time, Ashley (named after the county in Ohio), has proven to be quite a handful. She was a perfect, if silly and spirited" dog for several years, then, about 3 years ago when we adopted our 4th (at the time) puppy, Titan, she started showing some pretty scary signs that something was wrong. Our odyssey to determine what was wrong with her led us to Angell Memorial hospital in Boston, where she was diagnosed with a mostly fatal illness called GME. I won't go into what this means, but basically she has lesions on her brain, which alter her perception drastically. Her head moves constantly, and her depth perception is shot. She cannot go up/down stairs, and it's very difficult for her to eat. The prescribed treatment is a steroid, which, while effective, will ultimately kill her by damaging her kidneys and other internal organs. Obviously, we went ahead with the steroid treatment in the hopes that she would go into remission. We treated her for 6 months, and the improvement was amazing. When we took her off the steroids however, she quickly relapsed, which meant another round of steroids, and another prescription. This time, the prescription was for a drug called Cyclosporine, which is used by organ transplant patients to help combat rejection of their new organs. It's unbelievably expensive, especially for a dog. We were paying about $400 a month for this, for about 6 months. After she stopped this, we had yet another relapse, where we moved to yet another drug, which she took for most of a year. Mercifully, this one was not as expensive, quite reasonable actually, and she's been off of it for about a month now. So far, no more relapses. It's been quite a long strange trip; it's amazing what you'll do for your animals, especially when you don't have children and you (thank God) have a reasonable amount of disposable income. I imagine that when all is said and done, I've spent around $5000 on Ashley's care over the last 3 years. When you love a (any) dog like I do, this isn't really a choice; if you got the money, you spend it, but I sometimes wonder if we did the right thing. Ashley is happy now, she loves to eat and sleep, but she's clearly not the same dog I adopted 6 years ago. She isn't as playful, and she seems addled most of the time. She's still affectionate with me, but can be grumpy with Titan, who, for a while, was her best friend. I guess at the end of the day, my question is put to bed when, after we've all gone to bed for the evening, Ashley curls up next to my head on my pillow and lapses into sleep, just as she's done since she was old enough to jump into bed with us. I wouldn't trade that for all the money in the world...