Up until April 2007, we had two sweet dogs, Snickers and Shadow. They were both female border collie mixes, Snickers being part hound of some kind and Shadow being part Labrador retriever.
Shadow had lots of health problems throughout her life, including epilepsy. In the middle of December 2006, she passed away in our backyard, nestled in Lorrie's arms. We think she must have had an aneurism or stroke.
After Shadow's passing, Snickers, shown in this picture, reverted to being a pup, even though she was several years older than Shadow. There's a doggie park near our home and, in March and April of 2007, we started taking Snickers there as often as we could. Snickers loved it. She could run around without a leash on, visit with "buddies," and get some exercise.
We loved it, too. We liked to take the grandkids with us so that they could run around a little bit and enjoy all the dogs.
In early April, we noticed a pretty big lump in Snicker's belly. She had always loved to have her tummy rubbed, but all of a sudden she started pulling away when we tried to rub it. Lorrie took her to the vet. He said that it was probably just a benign tumor on her spleen, but that he would have to go in surgically to make sure and to remove it. When he got in there, though, he discovered that it was cancerous and had spread to quite a few other places. He called Lorrie while Snickies was still anesthetized and told her what his findings were. He recommeded not waking her up because she would not have a very high quality of life from that point on.
Lorrie had to make the decision, because I was at work. Even though it was painful and certainly not what we had hoped and prayed for, she knew that it was the right thing to do. It took a lot of courage and compassion to tell the vet to just increase the anesthesia and send Snickies off to the next life.
We miss our doggies. It's especially hard for Lorrie who enjoyed their companionship throughout the day when she was the only person at home. We would love to have another dog. Both of us have always had dogs since we were born. But we know we can't have any more. It's too hard to lose them. And they're terribly expensive these days. Also, it's a hassle to line up people to take care of them when you're going to be gone for any length of time.
At least these are our rationalizations at this point in time.
