Daig Noise

Interesting progression in dog ownership.
 

Our first two dogs were, from a barking standpoint, very quiet. Lana earned the nicknames "Lana-moo", "Moo-cow" and just "Moo" because she liked to conversationally-vocalize in a manner that was somewhat bovine (obviously). Puckett was generally too goofy to bark or even growl. Only very rarely would he alert-bark or warn-bark - basically, just when he thought there was a threat I hadn't seen or that I had reacted to but that he thought needed further discouragement. Otherwise, his vocalizations mostly came when he saw other dogs that he wanted to play ...and then his low-pitched voice became an embarrassing mewl.


After Lana passed (euthanasia b/c of a combination of cancer and a degenerative spinal-condition), we got Cira. Cira was generally a very low-key dog. There were things that _did_ excite her to the point of actual exuberance, but it was a _very_ quiet exuberance. Her expressiveness was far more physical than audible. Her most-audible expressions were her expressions of gustatory delight - a very hearty belch after wolfing down breakfast. Her entire bearing before eating in the morning was one of, "OH MY GOD: _BREAKFAST TIME". The daily-BRACK would only come after she would come flying back into the living room and launching herself onto my couch. Usually, the belch would be followed by a bullie-grin ...framed by specks of errant rice stuck to her snout.

After Pucket passed (euthenasia b/c of very aggressive cutaneous lymphoma that spread to his lungs), we got Lady.  Lady... is the first dog that we had tendencies towards barkiness. She can be conversationally vocal in a manner similar to Lana. However, a lot of her vocalization comes as excited barking: get her spun up through playing and playful growling becomes playful barking. She will also bark when we leave the house and don't leave the TV on (at least the conversational audio) for her. If someone knocks on the front door or rings the doorbell, she also barks. Other than that, though — and if you don't count her snoring and brachycephalic snorting — she's fairly quiet.

After Cira passed (euthanasia b/c of severe, suddenly-manifesting end-stage renal-failure), we got Kaiya. Unlike the previous dogs who were all bullie/bullie mixes (Cira being the only "pure" bullie - a staffy), Kaiya is a bullie-mix that isn't all bullie. She's a bullie/lab mix. She's also considerably barkier than any of our other dogs had been. If she hears a noise, she's gonna bark at it. If it's a noise from out-of-sight, even if she's hearing the same noise multiple times in a given timespan, she'll bark each time she hears it. For example, my wife was just out in the front-foyer's closet, organizing it to store some new stuff in it. Each time Donna's activities made bumping-sound, Kaiya would bark. I love our nubby-dog (recently had to have her tail docked due to "happy-tail" related infection) to death, but the frequent alerting is maddening - especially the re-alerting.

Opportunities in Loss

I used my blog to help me work through the process of loss. Being a pet owner - particularly when you tend to get pets via rescues - means that dealing with loss is an inevitability. It sucks. It's like a kick in the guts that keeps on giving long after pet's final breath has been drawn.

That said, I have been quite fortunate. Thus far, I've generally been in the position to open my home to a new pet when one of the incumbents has died. While we opted not to replace the cats I'd had for seventeen years, we've replaced each of the prior dogs that has passed. Most recently, after Cira's passing, we got Kaiya — the black dog in the video, below:

Lady (the white-headed dog) has displayed some iffiness with new dogs - at least while we've had her out walking on-leash. Kaiya was described to us by her rescue organization as being a mostly chill dog, but had some on-leash iffiness of her own. Fortunately, we were able to meet her in a scenario where both dogs were able to be introduced and monitored off-leash (they were leashed, but the leashes were dropped ...available for use if something went sideways). The introduction was promising, so, we returned the following week to make her ours.

As you can see in the video, the two dogs seem to be getting on well. They rough-house, but that's bullie play-style. If you knew Lady's barks, you'd be able to hear that she's play-barking throughout the entire video. As I write this, both dogs are laying curled up with each other on the couch-pillow next to me. It's very warm. It's also very happy-making.

Deathwatch Begins

Apparently, the month of March really seems to hate my/our having pets.

This week, the upset stomach we'd taken Cira to the vet for ultimately resulted in a terminal diagnosis.

It started late Tuesday morning with stomach upset. She'd bolted her food like she often does and then threw it up shortly thereafter. Scarf/barf. This wasn't something she frequently did, but it wasn't completely out of the blue, either. She had the nickname "hollow-dog" for a reason: she's really food-motivated.

Donna tried again with a small, bland food offering. She ate it. And seemed to do ok with it. But she was still showing som signs of nausea, so we called the vet for guidance. They instructed us to come in for an initial evaluation. We were assuming we were succumbing to the usual "overly-nervous dog parents" thing.

The evening vet did an initial evaluation, and decided that, while a little bit dehydrated, she seemed otherwise fine. She was active, waggy and not showing signs of pain - even with fairly firm abdominal palpation. So, he gave her a subcutaneous fluid injection and some anti-nausea medication. He instructed us to bring her back if she showed further symptoms and they'd order further tests and try to address any further symptoms. He also told us to try some Prilosec, the next day, if the nausea persisted.

The remainder of the evening was fairly uneventful, so I went to the office to work, on Wednesday. Cira was still mostly herself, so Donna tried the process of re-introducing her to food. She started with some plain rice and chicken in the morning, and repeated a few more times throughout the day. She'd also given her a Prilosec in the morning, per the vet's orders.

Thursday, I had a doctor's appointment scheduled, so it was going to be a telework day. An hour or so before sunup, I heard Cira hacking - as though she might be gagging or vomiting. Not wanting to light up the whole room, I came over with my cellphone — flashlight on — to check on her. Since I was shortly due to get up to telework, any way, I opted to bring her downstairs with me so she could nap by my side on my couch.

Donna came down with Lady and fed each dog. I apprised her of why I was downstairs so early with Cira. After the dogs finished their breakfasts, she went upstairs to check for vomit and found some in her bed-area. It was about time for me to leave for my doctor's appointment, so I told her to contact the vet and get an opinion. They advised Donna to bring Cira in and had an appointment available to do so. Donna let me know this while I was at my appointment. My appointment ended early enough that I was able to meet them at the vet only a minute or two after the consult started.

The vet gave her more fluids, some more aggressive medications and a script for medications to administer at home. We were instructed try bland food again with the medications and to call if Cira showed further signs of illness. The plan was that, if Cira did exhibit further issues, they'd do Xrays to verify that there weren't any bowel obstructions.

Donna gave her the meds, but Cira wasn't interested in food. I'd assumed that, because the vet had warned us that the one medicine was very bitter, that Cira wasn't interested in food because of how awful the medication made her mouth taste. Later in the afternoon, she threw up the pills and the food she'd had for breakfast. We tried feeding her again, but she still wouldn't eat. More worryingly, she wasn't even interested in licking peanutbutter off of either of our fingers. Obviously, we called the vet and they told us to bring her back.

This trip, they opted to do an X-ray to ensure that the week's sudden onset of vomiting and persistent nausea hadn't been caused by any kind of bowel blockage. The first indications that something truly dire was going on was that her spleen was noticeably enlarged and she had what appeared to be calcification in both her kidneys. We discussed diagnostic and treatment options. We opted to leave her there for some additional testing, some antibiotics and IV fluids and then returned home.

An hour or so after we got home, the vet unexpectedly called us. We weren't expecting a call till the next morning when the various (sent out) tests should have been back. Usually, early callbacks are rarely good news. This call very much wasn't good news. Cira's kidney-function tests were showing extremely high BUN and creatinine levels - a couple multiples of the numbers typically seen for stage IV renal failure in dogs. The enlarged spleen, while worrying, was no longer the top priority.

And now, we're waiting for ultrasound results to try to determine what all's going on in there. It's unlikely that the results will be anything outside of the immediate to less-immediate spectrum. At this point, it's mostly a case of trying to determine how much time she might have left at an acceptable quality of life. Call's already been put in to the in-home euthanasia service to check provider-availability. So, depending on the sonogram results, this could all be over very shortly or in a few day's time.

The bugger of it all, aside from the shear unexpectedness of it, is the timing. We lost both our cats to renal failure on the twelfth of the previous year's March. Similarly, we'd received a lung-cancer diagnosis for an earlier dog back in March of 2011. So, March is proving to be a hateful month for our pet ownership.

Ok, So Maybe She's Got Some Boxer In Her

When we got Lady, the rescue organization had claimed she was part boxer. Given her appearance - Lady pretty much looks like she's 100% pitbull -  that the rescue is based in Maryland and the rescue had her fostered in Maryland, we'd sort of assumed that the "boxer-mix" description was to avoid any problems with Maryland's anti-pitbull laws (that were on the books in 2011). I mean, does this dog look boxer-y to you?

Yes, she's a fairly vocal dog.

Yes. she's very "handsy".

Yes, she's got (ever so much of) an underbite.

Yes, she breaths like she has a bit of brachycephalic syndrome.

All of these are things that are common in boxers. They were things exhibited by our prior (very boxer-y) boxer-mix ...but she just doesn't look terribly boxery...

A little before Thanksgiving, I noticed a growth on her right ear. Having lost her predecessor to skin-cancer, and that she is a white dog, I was, to say the least, "concerned". I decided to watch it and see if it grew or went away.

It didn't go away, by Christmas, so we opted to take her in the weekend immediately-following Christmas day (was planning on the following Monday, but our vet has no-additional-cost Saturday hours and offered us an earlier appointment). The vet took samples of the growth and said she'd call as soon as she got the results. She cautioned that, with the time of year, it could be a little longer than usual.

Tonight she called back. The good news is, it's not cancer. The bad news is that she apparently has canine leproid granuloma - something for which there's not really good treatment options other than "management". That said, they're primarily cosmetic in their impact.

Oh... And they're fairly rare (most vets only see a couple occurrences in their careers) and predominantly found in (in order of prevalence), boxers, mastiffs and other bull-breeds. So, maybe this is just another indication that Lady may actually have some Boxer in her.

The Pain of Bully Ownership

Since shortly after moving in with my now wife, we have had one or more dogs. Due to my wife's allergic sensitivities to longer-haired dog breeds, all of our dogs have been bull mixes: our first pair were an American Bulldog/Boxer-mix and an American Bulldog/Bull Terrier-mix; our current pair are an American Staffordshire Terrier and a American Pitbull Terrier. All four have been great dogs. They've been friendly, happy, people-oriented dogs.

We frequently take our current pair for walks around the neighborhood. Most days, our walks are uneventful. We walk anywhere from a half to a mile-and-a-half around the neighborhood.

Late yesterday afternoon, we took our dogs for a walk. My wife wanted some stuff at the local convenience store, so, we leashed up the dogs and walked over. We decided that, rather than walk the short way around our block and back to the house, we would go home by the long way around our block. 

I'd had my head down, grinding documentation for work, all day. I had no real grasp on what time it was. It turns out, our walk back to the house coincided with when the local middle school was letting out. As we were comeing to the end of our block, the school bus left off a mob of kids. Several of them caugh sight of our dogs and came ambling over. They did the usual thing of asking "are they friendly" and, upon giving our affirmation, began to fawn over the dogs. We stood around and chatted while the dogs happily soaked up the attention. A couple minutes into this, one of the kids said, "wow, she's really pretty (referring to our blue-eyed dog, Lady): what kind of dog is she?" I replied, "she's a pitbull". All but one of the kids tensed-up and stepped back. Fortunately, the one most engaged in fawning over Lady kept right on going. She pointed out to her friends that "there's nothing to worry about - they're friendly dogs". They relaxed but didn't return to fussing over the dogs (though the one continued her attention). 

This strikes me as really sad. I mean, here they were, happily interacting with the dogs while they were unaware of their breeds. However, upon hearing the word "pitbull", immediately changed how they saw the two dogs. I get that pitbulls have had a lot of bad press over the years. And, if I were going just by that, I'd be wary about approaching them - moreso than, say, a Shi-Tzu. But, to have been interacting with demonstrably friendly dogs and then going cold at the mention of a breed? It just doesn't make sense: act based on what you see before you, not what you see re-hashed in the fear-mongering press.

 

A Visitation

So, today we braved the torrential downpours and gale-force winds (I'm exaggerating, but not by very much) to go and meet the dog we first saw online as "Gizmo". Having met him, I can agree with the current fosters that "Gizmo" might not be the right name for him, but neither is the "Winston" they've been trying to rename him to. For now, I'm thinking that if he ends up our, we'll probably call him "Dubz" (or "Dubzy"), as his fosters are, sometimes referring to him as just "W". Look at the picture, below:

Happy-daig

He seems like the kind of dog that may spawn a thousand names ...Much as Puckett did.

At any rate, today's trip seemed like it was a very good meeting. We walked both dogs, side-by-side, throughout the store, outside and back in again. Initially, they mostly ignored each other. Then they exchanged sniffs. Then a few more sniffs. Then the full on doggy greetings. Then back to ignoring each other. Then more sniffs and greetings. There was a little bit of "am I the alpha?" posturing from both, but neither got too revved up and both quickly disengaged without prompting. 

I didn't want to stay too long, because, not yet knowing how well he'll do with our cats, I don't want to fall in love and be disappointed.. The shelter that the fosters had gotten the dog from had indicated that he'd passed basic cat tests, but, we won't know how he does with ours until he comes to our house for a visit. Hopefully, he does well.

On the plus side of it all, while some of his pix made me think of Puckett, meeting him removed my fears that he'll be too much like Puckett. He's very much a different dog. Still, he shows signs of being in a similar class of awesomeness that Puckett was in. I really hope this works out. 

Too Close for Comfort

So, was searching through PetFinder to see if we could find a pup to help fill some of the gigantic hole left by Puckett's departure. It's kind of a depressing process. You see all these dogs in need, and part of you wishes you could help them all. You know you can't, but still...

At any rate, neither the local shelter nor the rescue organizations we got Puckett or Lana and Cira through seem to have any candidates of interest. Thus, I expanded my search. I have American Bulldog Rescue as a page I'm a fan of on FaceBook. Most of their pups are far away (PA, Florida, deep into the boonies of Maryland). However, when I looked at their "local" affiliate (their Maryland pet listings), I found a link to a dog named Gizmo (apparently, now "Winston"). This was a courtesy posting for BullyPaws. So, I went to their site and looked at his profile.

He looked like a nice dog and is listed as cat and dog compatible. Since we have a staffie and two bengals, this was kind of an important consideration. So, I sent in a "we're interested" email and filled out the initial adoption application form. Yesterday, we got email back, directing us to the person that was actually fostering him. One of BullyPaws' volunteers called to go over the forms with us, to ensure that we knew what we might be getting into (if Winston works out, he'd be our fourth bully rescue and about my seventh dog). We had a nice conversation that gives me hope that we'll be able to work with them.

Winston's foster family got in touch with me via email. They sent me a link to their web site, since they'd posted up pictures of him and stories on his progress. He seems a really nifty dog ...but, oh my, does he have a startling resemblance to Puckett (that I'd not noticed  nearly so much in his BullyPaws profile).

We're set to go meet him, this weekend. We'd visit sooner, but he's about an hour's drive away and life is currently getting in the way of running out to see him. I'm hoping that the resemblance isn't too unsettling. I don't want to have unreasonable expectations. But, then again, maybe it just hints at a dog that's going to turn out to be as great as Puckett was. Tough act to follow, but one can hope, right?

Eerie Likenesses

Saw this girl  on BullyPaws.Org and wondered who'd cloned Lana:

This dog's name is "Serenity". Her ears are a bit different. Other pix make it look like she's got much less jacked-up teeth (they look normal rather than as though she'd chewed through a heavy chain to free herself (Lana was found as a stray in the Carolinas, if I remember her back-story correctly - probably after freeing herself from a fight-breeder). And her proportions are a bit different. But a couple of her pictures are an eerie likeness.

Too Bully

In the image below is 42lbs of tough, waggly dog. This picture was taken while she was trying to use the "Doggy Mind Trick" to convince me that the pizza crust I had should be hers:

 

 

Sorry, dear, but such tricks don't work on me.

 

At 42lbs, this little beast is strong. Thus far, she's figured out how to break out of both of our dog crates. Initially, we'd thought she'd bashed her way out. Turns out, she's actually been yanking her way out. The second time she'd gotten out of one of the cages, the cage door was wedged inward. Couldn't figure that one out until today, when she noticed that she was being weird with her mouth. On investigation, there's a chip out of one of her lower fangs. Apparently, she chipped it while yanking the door in with her mouth.

 

Damned dog

 

Oh well: she's an appointment with the vet, Monday. Not looking forward to what doggy-dentistry is likely to cost.

Inverse Effort

Is it just me, or do dogs chew small pieces of food much more than they do larger ones? I mean, If I toss one of our dogs a big, honking piece of meat, it's gone in one gulp. If I toss them the corner of a cracker, it's "chew-chew-chew-chew-chew..." and eventually swallowed. Size aside, you'd think if they were going to linger over a piece of food, it would be the tasty meat rather than the relatively bland cracker-fragment.

I don't get dogs. =)

Snake-eyes

Two different rescue organizations and found no daigz what are compatible with Puckett. Turns out that Puckett's a bit more alpha-ish than I'd originally thought.

We found several pups that we liked, but... Much as not every person gets my sense of humor, not every dog gets the way Puckett likes to play.

This could take a while. :(

All Things End

Today, we saw to the ending of our dog, Lana. Lana was a rescue. She was conveyed into our care by A Forever-Home Rescue Foundation in the spring of 2003 at one of their frequent adoption events at the Chantilly Petco.

 

The Lana Bear

 

I'm not sure what led her to us, but the marks in her coat and her reactions to certain people and actions always told us it wasn't an easy path..

 

After we'd gotten married in January, we felt the need to start our "family". We tried finding a dog from a number of places. First, we tried the local Animal Welfare League shelter. Alas, none of the critters we found there really "spoke" to us. Of the ones that did, they weren't compatible with the animal allergies that Donna had.

 

Along the way, we'd discovered that we liked bully-breeds. They're awesome dogs with a really undeserved bad reputation. First, we tried the local boxer and bulldog rescues. We even got so far as bringing home one lovely candidate, but she just didn't like our cats. So, we had to send her back.

 

During this process, we discovered that some of the breed-specific rescue organizations set unrealistic expectations for those seeking to adopt the dogs in their charge. I get that these are people who are genuinely concerned about the dogs in their charge, but it left kind of a bad taste in our mouth. We were essentially told that our small (1400sq.ft.) duplex and fenced in yard weren't a suitable environment for the types of dogs we were hoping to adopt. Ironically, this came from people that were fostering dogs in smaller houses with even smaller (or no!) yards.

 

Lesson learned, we moved on in our searches.

 

Being an IT guy, Google had frequently proven to be a great tool for finding the things I wanted and needed. Indeed, in this pursuit, Google was our friend. Google led us to PetFinder.Com. PetFinder, in turn, led us to the A Forever-Home Rescue Foundation.

 

On their web site, we found this lovely, sweet-looking American Bulldog/Boxer mix. So, we contacted them to find out more. They'd indicated they were going to be having an adoption event at the PetCo in Chantilly, VA. In our conversations with them, it sounded like Lana might be an ideal match and that our environment might be well suited to her. At the time, we were still looking to have human children and already had a pair of cats. Lana was being fostered in a house with toddlers and infants and did well with them. Further, she'd shown no indications of problems getting along with cats. We marked the date on our calendar and drove out to Chantilly to meet Lana.

 

She was just as sweet as we thought she would be. She greeted us by offering first one paw to shake, then the other. She seemed to genuinely enjoy the attention she was getting from us, so we arranged to have her brought to our house to meet our cats.

 

The staffer from Forever-Home brought her out a few nights later. She was adequately pleased with the potential accommodations and Lana seemed to not be bothered by the cats (indeed, it was the cats - well, just one cat - who were harder to please). So, we did up the paperwork and she was ours.

 

The first years were hard. She showed some of the signs of the abuse she'd received before coming to us. She was getting over a bad heartworm infestation, and was somewhat slowed by that damage and the medications being used to treat it (the heartworms left her with a lifelong heart-murmur). So, she was always going to be a low energy dog. She was also extremely foot-shy, afraid of explosions (didn't find this out till the week of fourth of July) and afraid of black men. She'd also, at some point prior to coming to us, given birth to at least one litter of puppies. We surmised that, because of her looks and some of her "twitches" (things she was scared of), she'd probably been used as a breeder dog for a dog-fighting operation.

 

While she enjoyed shaking hands and doing what we came to refer to as "the boxer walk", she was otherwise not terribly interactive. She didn't care for chew toys - probably because her teeth were utterly busted (presumably part of her prior abuse). She had no tail to speak of. She was very much not a barking dog. However, she was quite vocal: she liked to trill and "rowl" and "roo" and grumble (which led to several of her nicknames: Lana bear; Moo-cow; Rooly-roo; Rowly-dog; etc.). It was all a part of her underlying sweetness and contributed to the simple joy of her presence.

 

Much as some parents of only-children discover that the first baby required siblings, Lana showed us that we needed another dog. That's when we got Puckett.

 

Puckett was exactly what she needed to be brought the rest of the way out of her shell. The dog we previously though had no tail, we discovered did have a tail. ...Well, she had a bump under the skin where a tail should have sprouted out. What we discovered is that, when she was really happy, she'd wiggle hat bump back and forth. She'd also sorta just wiggle all over. She also came to sing and dance when she was rally happy. And, always, there was her boxer-walk.

 

Fortunately, we had nearly 8 years to enjoy her. But, like all good things, that time had to end. Today was that day.

 

After getting back from Thanksgiving, she'd been exhibiting unexplained pain - she'd always been amazingly pain-tolerant, that, to hear her yelp was very concerning. We'd also noticed that the lymphnodes in her neck were visibly swollen and felt angry to the touch. So, it was with dread that we took her to the vet. The vet asked us to leave her there so they could run some tests. The initial cytology looked suspect and her pain turned out to be coming from her back. Xrays indicated she had an advanced case of spondylosis. The initial lymph aspiration smears looked troubling, but it would be a couple days till they had definitive lab results. So, the sent her home with muscle relaxers, mild-narcotics and anti-biotics.

 

We waited two days for the lab results. During that time, Lana mostly slept. She didn't really drink and was pooping infrequently. So, we weren't expecting the results to be good. And, when they called, Tuesday evening, they weren't Turns out the swollen lympnodes were because of a lyphosarcoma.

 

The vet offered the possibility of chemo to treat the cancer. However, Lana was 10 years old, apparently had chronic and deteriorating back pain and the history of heart problems. Given her size-range, she really only had an expected average lifespan of about two more years.

 

The vet couldn't promise us that the chemotherapy would either put her into remission or not make her sick in the process. Even if she could have, there was the matter of the bad and deteriorating back. She was noticeably weak around the hind quaters - somewhat tottery when standing and fragile when laying. It only made sense that we let her go.

 

We made an appointment to see her on her way at noon, today. We lavished her with attention all night and gave her one last big meal of all her favorite foods: gobs of peanutbutter, rice, cheese, chicken, tongue and topped it with a splash of bourbon (we'd have given her Guinness - her real favorite - but there was none in the house, so we gave her what she'd previously demonstrated was a runner-up favorite). We continued to lavish attention on her, throughout the morning. We took last pictures and waited for the death-clock to count down.

 

We arrived at the Alexandria Animal Hospital about 20 minutes ahead of her appointment. I'd left early in anticipation of being delayed by the construction plaguing the 1½-mile stretch between our house and the vet's office. I'd not wanted to be late for fear we'd have to reschedule. As heart-rending as waiting for the original appointment had been, it would have been soul-killing to have to reschedule. Somehow, there was no delay today. So, we waited out the appointment time by taking her on one last mini-walk through the grassy areas outside the vet's office.

 

Three minutes ahead of the appointed time, we went in. The staff was very caring and discreet, quickly escorting us back to the room where they do the procedure. We didn't have to sit and wait in a waiting room, trying not to cry in front of strangers. We were able to go to a private room where the vets and techs were able to walk us through things, giving us all the time we needed to get ready for the procedure.

 

Eventually, they took her to the back to put a catheter in and give her an anti-anxiety medicine. They then brought her back to the room for the administration of the euthanising chemicals. They also brought her a whole, big bowl of a meat-hash to enjoy before the administration of the chemicals. Meal done, they gave us a few minutes alone with her, then the vet came back in to finish the process. Donna held onto Lana and I held onto them both.

 

First, the anesthetic was injected into the catheter. She fairly quickly showed its effects moving from standing to sitting to laying. Once she was sure Lana was fully sedated, the vet then adminstered the killing cocktail. I watched the awareness and life drain from her eyes and listened as her breathing slowed to a stop. The vet offered us time alone with her.

 

During that window, there was the death-rattle, and then, I watched the last visible twitches of life cease.

 

The veterinary nurse then came in to take Lana's corpse for cleanup. While back there, they took a paw-cast. Cleaned up, they brought her back to us. Donna wrapped her in a blue sheet she'd soaked with rose and lavendar scent. I then carried her out to the SUV and we drove home.

 

Once home, I took her to the back porch so that Donna could say her goodbyes. Donna wrapped her in a second shroud and sewed up up with blue stitching. She then wrote all the various nicknames, we'd come to know her by over the years, on the shroud. Her rites done, Donna picked up Lana's shrouded corpse and carried her back through the house and back out to the car.

 

I then made the slow drive, Donna and Dog in the back seat, to Sunset Pet Services. They're a local pet funeral and cremation facility. We were taking her there for cremation as they offer individual cremation services.

 

We'll be picking up her ashes, tomorrow. Her ashes will be spread over our roses so that we can see a little bit of her each time the flowers begin to bloom in the spring.

 

High-Gravity Sunday

Last night, Donna and I slept downstairs to keep Lana company. It appears that the spondylosis the vet had discovered as the source of the prior day's yelping was causing her too much discomfort to allow her to be brought upstairs to bed. Given her screechiness, even if I could have gotten her upstairs, I was worried that the pain she was exhibiting would make it difficult, if not impossible, to get her out of her box and back down this morning. So, we let her park herself, as comfortably as she could, on her throw pillow and we bedded down near her to keep her company.

As we waited for the pain meds to help her drift off to sleep, we had some painful discussions. While I'd be most concerned about the swollen lymph glands, earlier in the evening, it seemed like the back problem was an even more pressing problem. Worse, it seemed like it was progressing. We decided we'd watch for changes, today, and make decisions based on that.

Unfortunately, it's still not looking any better. She still seems to be in a level of discomfort. She seems unsure on her feet. She doesn't seem to want to poop and she doesn't seem to want to drink (I even tried raising her water dish up so she'd not have to bow her head down to drink). Yet, at the same time, she seemed like she wanted to be herself. She was very interested in her breakfast. She tried to do her morning dancing. When we brought Puckett down, she seemed to want to share in his morning exuberance. 

I don't know whether the pain meds are helping and are likely to get her to meaningfully improve. The not drinking is worrying. I don't know that I saw her drink at all, yesterday - I know she hadn't after coming home. I believe that we're going to end up having to make the decision, today or tomorrow, to send her on her way. It's seeming like the potential lymphoma's just going to end up being an interesting but otherwise meaningless data point.

It's feeling more and more like we're soon to be coming to the end of our 8 years, together. Still, I wasn't even expecting her to get to be this old. She had heart problems when we got her. She had that health-scare last December that made me think we were going to be sending her on her way, then. So, maybe, this is just another scare, but, it really doesn't feel like it's just a scare. It just feels like she's aged a lot in the last couple months and it's finally caught up.

Gotta call the vet's office, later, to see if I can get some idea of how progressed her spondylosis is. Gotta talk and see if holding out, too much longer, makes sense.