If you are a pet owner, you should be well-acquainted with your vet. Not only do animals need regular wellness checkups and vaccinations, but this person can be your greatest resource and ally in the event of a crisis.

My vet knows me well -- right now I have four dogs and a cat, but have brought countless critters to him over the years for all manner of aid, whether they were foundlings or my own precious pets. He also knows that I generally do not overreact to problems and can handle many first aid and illness situations by myself -- at least to some extent -- so when he got a call from me minutes after opening up the office one morning saying I had an extremely sick dog, he knew something must be dreadfully wrong.

Ding was always a happy, healthy Beagle/Australian Shepherd cross. She was a little overweight but generally active and loved her human dearly. One day I noticed Ding looking just a little bit less peppy than usual and mentioned to my then-significant other that his dog might be sick. She looked like maybe she'd eaten something that didn't agree with her, and I decided to watch her to make sure she didn't get any worse or throw up all over the house. That was Saturday. On Sunday Ding lazed about the house on her side most of the day, following on his heels but with droopy tail and looking definitely sick. I tried calling the vet on his off-duty line to get his take on the dog's change in behavior but got no reply...Sunday is his only day off and undoubtedly he avoids the phone like the plague. Ding didn't look sick enough to warrant much alarm, just out-of-sorts, so I didn't call either of the two other vets in town as I prefer to talk to the one I know and trust.

Monday. I wake up in the morning, get a drink of water then call the dogs to go outside for their morning potty break. Three dogs come running. Curious, I pop my head back into the living room and Ding is still laying flopped on her side in her favorite sleeping spot. I call her name...no response, not even a tail wag. Suddenly certain that I had a dead dog on my hands, I cautiously moved to her side and called her name again. She was still breathing. Her breath came very hot and her nose was dry and leathery. At my touch she opened one eye just enough to see who it was, then closed it again. I checked the clock; the vet would be opening his door in ten minutes. That was probably the longest ten minutes of my life.

"I'm sorry, I don't have any time for her today, I'm completely booked." the vet tells me. "Sir, trust me, she needs to be looked at today." At my insistence, the vet finally relented and said that if I believed it really was an emergency then it must be. He told me that I could bring her in and leave her in one of the kennels there and he would take a look at her if he had time. The vet's office is six blocks from my house in a rural area...I got the call-back before I reached home. He knew the problem and needed my permission to confirm his diagnosis with a blood test, and then permission to proceed with the necessary measures to save the dog's life.

What caused this perfectly healthy dog to be sitting on death's doorstep with barely any warning at all?

My then-significant other, Nate, and I had been together for five years. When I moved in, my two dogs came with me to join his two dogs and I had some concern that his dogs weren't fixed. One, Dozer, had been rescued from an acquaintance as a puppy when they planned on putting him down after finding out just how much work it is to raise a puppy, and he never got neutered. Ding was Nate's first dog ever that he had adopted from the local shelter a couple years before. She had just come to the shelter the night before he visited and hadn't been spayed yet. The shelter was overcrowded and the lady who ran it told him he could adopt the dog, but that he would have to get her spayed. It was only a verbal agreement on which he never followed through.

Growing up in a pet-free home I suppose it's not surprising that Nate never heard about the importance of spaying and neutering, as well as the horrible pet overpopulation problem in the U.S. Whenever I tried to talk to him about getting his dogs fixed the excuses were ready, "It's too expensive", "he's too dumb to know what to do anyway", "she never gets loose so I don't have to worry about puppies" and so on. Nate also told me that he would like to have one of Ding's puppies for his next dog after she was gone, and wanted to breed her once before having her spayed. I tried telling him this was a very bad idea and that intentionally bringing cross-bred puppies into the world that would either end up in a shelter or take the place of shelter dogs in a home wasn't right, that Ding's current age of about four years old was too old to be subjecting her to her first litter anyway, and that there are many wonderful dogs out there needing homes and he'd be sure to find another great dog after Ding died of old age. All to no avail. Next, I started in on the health implications of unaltered dogs. I explained all the things that could go wrong that wouldn't if she were spayed -- still nothing.

On the morning in question I carried Ding's near-lifeless body into the vet's office and he swiftly deduced that she had an infection. With the bit of information that she was not spayed, he knew exactly what it was and the cure was simple -- he'd have to do an emergency spaying.

Ding had gotten an infection in her uterus possibly days before her emergency vet visit. There are a number of things that could have caused the infection. When I went to pick her up later that day, Ding was alert and moving as easily as her new stitches would let her. The vet pulled me aside for an explanation of how I came to have an unaltered dog (as I've said before, he knows me well and knows that I know better than that) and then told me that Ding's uterus weighed an astounding 3.5 pounds when he removed it (for a medium-sized dog) and that it could have easily ruptured at any time, killing her instantly.

If anything good came of this episode, it's that Nate finally realized that there was truth in what I told him about the importance of spaying and neutering and allowed his other dog to be neutered shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, this dog could have easily been spared her pain and brush with death by a very simple procedure that should be done on all dogs that are not to be used as breeding stock. That is, that should be done on all dogs that are not top examples of their breed or working class that have been certified free of disease and genetic disorders. If your concern is financial, I assure you a simple spaying is much cheaper than an emergency trip to the vet's or an unwanted litter of puppies.