Curing Eliza

Mike and I two weeks ago adopted a new dog from the animal shelter. (Well, actually I went the shelter one saturday for fun and came home, to Mike's surprise, with a new pet.) She's a beautiful 1 year old brown and white beagle. I'm calling her Eliza in honor of one of my favorite literary heroines, Elizabeth Bennett.

The last few days, Eliza has been sneezing like crazy. And doing horrible reverse sneezes where it looks like she's going into a seizure and can't breathe. These reverse sneeze attacks happened like 30 times a day. Awful. Last Saturday I took her to the vet. He said there was a chance she had a foreign object up her nose, like a foxtail - which is a weedy seed type thing that often gets up dogs' noses. To find out, he said they would have to put her under deep general anesthesia and go up her nose and down her throat with a scope.

I was in a quandry. Of course I want Eliza to be cured, but I was really uncomfortable with a fishing expedition that involved deep general anesthesia, particularly when I really felt there was really very little chance of such a foreign object getting up her nose. I told him I'd think about it over the weekend, but when she wasn't any better on Tuesday, I took her in, got another vet's opinion, and agreed to the scope. Of course, they found nothing.

This all leaves me wondering what the right approach to medical care for my animals is. Is a non-invasive, hands off, natural approach better? Or should I be aggressive with problems by agreeing to speculative procedures like this? I'll never forgive myself for putting my pug Penelope through a horrible, intense operation to remove cancer in her mammeries. They weren't able to get it all, and she ended up dying within a couple of months suffering far more than she would have if she had not been through that operation.

Maybe less is more when it comes to these creatures we love.