06/18/2026
It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Minira last night. Transparency is a core value here at Kaiju Kennels, and because I know how much our community cares for our dogs, I want to share the details of her medical timeline and the difficult decisions that followed.
The initial signs began while I was away on an Alaska cruise in late May. Our house sitter noted a few incidents of vomiting. After starting her on Cerenia and a bland diet, she improved. I initially attributed the upset to stress or acid reflux from the change in routine. Upon my return, Minira was active, spirited, and behaving normally.
About a week later, the occasional vomiting returned, and she stopped finishing her food. For Minira, not finishing a meal is a concerning indicator. Work constraints prevented a vet visit that week, and the clinic was closed over the weekend. By Sunday night, she had stopped eating completely. I called for an appointment first thing Monday morning.
On Tuesday morning, June 9th, we took her in. X-rays showed no visible masses, but her bloodwork revealed high pancreas numbers. While at the clinic, she experienced an episode of watery diarrhea containing old blood. Based on these clinical signs, our vet diagnosed her with idiopathic pancreatitis.
Going into that appointment, I had resolved that if treatment would only prolong her life by a short time or "keep her comfortable", I would make the difficult choice to let her go. However, our vet advised that Minira was not dying just yet and felt she could make a recovery with aggressive supportive care. I allowed myself to be convinced to go against my initial instinct, and we chose to move forward.
The treatment plan was intensive. Minira was hospitalized for the first half of Tuesday to get her initial medications on board. She was placed on IV fluids, Panaquell, buprenorphine for pain, Cerenia, antibiotics, probiotics, Entyce, and a strict prescription fat-free diet. It is important to note that from this point forward, Minira would not eat anything on her own. To ensure she received the necessary nutrition, I fed her by rolling the canned prescription food into small meatballs and placing them directly into the back of her mouth.
For the next three days, I transported her back to the vet clinic every single day to continue her Panaquell injections, IV fluids, and painkillers.
The treatment itself introduced a distressing challenge. From the very first dose of buprenorphine, Minira had a severe reaction to the sedative effects. When I brought her in on Tuesday morning, she had the strength to jump into the hatch of my car. By the time I took her home that afternoon, she was so sedated that a vet tech had to carry her out to the vehicle.
Following the vet's advice, I reduced the frequency and amount of the buprenorphine, shifting from full dose 2-3 times per day to a half-dose just once a day in the late afternoon. She also had me supplement her pain management with gabapentin, even though it is not the ideal medication for pancreatitis pain. The cycle became predictable: she would be practically catatonic during the evenings, but would revive and seem alert by the late morning.
Unfortunately, each time I administered the buprenorphine, her reaction seemed stronger, and it took her progressively longer to become alert again.
By Friday, June 12th, she began occasionally moaning from discomfort. Seeing her in pain, I gave her the final dose of buprenorphine I had on hand. Friday night and early Saturday morning were difficult. She did not bounce back. The moaning continued, and she began panting heavily out of pure panic over the inability to control her own body. She had a wild, distressed look in her eyes -- a reaction I have recognized before in Hokkaido when they actively try to fight the effects of heavy sedation.
I stayed awake with her for over 40 hours because I did not want her to pass while I slept. Since I was out of buprenorphine, I relied strictly on gabapentin alongside her other medications.
By Saturday night, she finally began to become a little more alert. By Sunday morning, she had regained enough strength to walk independently again. However, I observed a concerning new symptom: although she lapped at her water eagerly, the water level in the bowl did not go down. To compensate, alongside the subcutaneous fluids I was already administering, I started syringing water directly into her mouth so she could wet her throat, which she was able to swallow effectively.
On Monday, June 15th, I returned to the vet clinic and reported everything that had transpired over the weekend. The vet expressed significant concern that Minira had not yet turned the corner. Typically, a dog sees noticeable improvement after a single dose of Panaquell, so her lack of progress was alarming. In response, our vet began reaching out to consult with internists, and we started discussing tentative plans to potentially take her to a specialist in Idaho. Before we left, the vet refilled all of Minira's medications, including the Cerenia, Entyce, and buprenorphine.
Tuesday, June 16th, felt like the breakthrough we had been hoping for. Minira was walking well and even took herself outside through the dog door to go to the bathroom completely on her own. She had two bowel movements that day -- her first since Friday -- and she felt spicy enough to grumble at the other dogs when they sniffed her too much. It was a reassuring glimmer of her normal self.
Unfortunately, that brief window of progress did not last. That afternoon, Minira began moaning slightly from discomfort. Wanting to ease her pain and utilizing the recent refill from our vet, I opted to give her the buprenorphine instead of the gabapentin I had relied on throughout the weekend.
That is when her condition rapidly declined. As soon as the medication hit her system, she took a severe nosedive. She went completely limp. Her eyes were wild, yet she was unable to keep them open or focused, and the heavy panting returned. For the next few hours, I waited anxiously, hoping the sedative would pass through her system. I did everything I could to keep her comfortable, carefully positioning her to keep her head elevated and her airway clear, but she lacked the strength to hold her head up or even keep her tongue in her mouth.
Around 9 pm her breathing became labored. As I tried to assist her, she suddenly threw her head back, and she passed away in my arms and lap.
In hindsight, the pattern is devastatingly clear: she consistently declined after receiving buprenorphine. When I feared she was going to pass away on Saturday, she had been given buprenorphine every day for four consecutive days. Conversely, when she showed such promising improvement on Tuesday morning -- walking, going outside, and acting like herself -- it had been over three full days since her last dose on Friday afternoon.
I consulted with our vet following Minira's passing, and she agrees with this assessment. It is our shared conclusion that Minira simply could not tolerate the buprenorphine specifically, and her system was having a severe, ultimately fatal, adverse reaction to the medication itself.
Since her passing, I have researched the medication more thoroughly. I learned that the half-life of buprenorphine can be up to 42 hours, and it takes five half-lives for it to completely leave the body. Because of this, the medication was not clearing her system between doses; instead, it was steadily building up in her body every time it was administered. This accumulation explains the increasing severity of her reactions over the first few days, why she improved when she had a three-day break from it, and why she ultimately could not survive that final dose.
My vet has cautioned me against blaming myself or second-guessing the decision to administer that final dose. Even though the correlation looks glaringly clear in hindsight, it was not easy to see while we were in the middle of the crisis. All I knew in that moment was that my dog was in pain, and I was giving her a medication that was prescribed specifically to relieve that suffering. When she started moaning on Tuesday afternoon, I worried that the gabapentin simply wasn't strong enough. I made the choice to give her the buprenorphine out of a desperate desire to keep her comfortable, completely unaware that it was the very thing her body could no longer handle.
(Photo taken on Saturday morning.)
