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A few weeks ago, our oldest poodle, Dante, had a stroke.
He was 13 or 14 years old. He was doing okay, but it was obvious he was losing strength, and he was beginning to trap himself behind doors and in corners and couldn't figure out how to get out of them.
Last week Monday we took him to the vet and he crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
Thus we went from a family of three doggies to a family of two doggies.
And that may drop to one soon.
Also a few weeks ago, our youngest, our blue tick hound Rupert, developed a cough. We left him at the vet for most of the day Monday (this week) for observation, the vet suspected it might be a dental abscess that was draining and triggering the cough, he was going to go in for a formal appointment on Friday. His appetite has been a bit off, which could be consistent with an abscess.
Last night Russet took Rupert and Charlie, our other poodle, for a late-night walk. When they got back, Rupert had a coughing bout. And coughed up some blood.
Russet had spotted a small spot of blood on the carpet a couple of weeks ago and thought it might have been something that Dante coughed up, now we think it was more likely to have been produced by Rupert.
This morning Russet calls our vet. She wants Rupert to have a heart x-ray to see if he might have worms. I call two clinics in Alamo as our vet doesn't have a machine, I'm able to get an appointment for this afternoon. I take the dogs by myself as Russet is totally zapped from getting no sleep last night and having to do some pretty terrible phone work this morning in addition to dealing with the vet.
I take Charlie as he'll need testing if Rupert has worms or certain other problems.
X-ray and blood work show no worms, which is good. Charlie has nothing other than his weight taken.
X-ray does show Rupert has cancer.
A couple spots on his heart, spots on his spine, and it's possible that one lobe of his lung is completely occluded.
Images will be sent off to a specialist for further study, Russet will talk to our vet about palliative care.
As far as we can tell, Rupert is in no pain, but he was definitely a little hesitant jumping into the car this afternoon, where even last Monday he just leapt in. He may be feeling it.
We don't consider treatment to be much of an option. He's a large dog, twelve years old, and treatment would not add years and vigor to his life. Personally, having seen first-hand what my dad and others went through with chemo and radiation treatment, with Rupert's cancer having already spread so much I just think it would be cruelty to subject him to it.
So it's likely we'll become a one-dog family in the not distant future, which is going to crush me yet again.
I called Terry, a long-time friend who gave us Rupert about seven years ago. Terry and his wife rescued Rupert when he lived in Omaha. They literally stole him from the garage of a man who kept him chained in a hot, unventilated garage with no water. His wife absolutely loved Rupert, and then a few years ago, quite out of the blue, she passed away in the middle of the night. We kept Rupert for a little while when Terry was relocating to the Phoenix area, he was staying with his sister who had cats. Terry was able to rehome Rupert with his brother who lived on the other side of town. And then his brother died rather unexpectedly. We became Rupert's permanent home at that point. He got along fabulously well with Dante during his initial stay with us, we acquired Charlie while Rupert was with Terry's brother. There was never much friction between our boys.
Terry was saddened, but deserved to know as he has close ties to Rupert and would often come and see him when we brought him to town, and I'll be keeping him informed as we get more information. I'm needing to get a repair done to my car that I'll probably have done in Phoenix, I'll see about moving up the timetable on that as soon as we get the report back from the specialist on the x-rays and give Terry a last visit with Ru.
*sigh*
He was 13 or 14 years old. He was doing okay, but it was obvious he was losing strength, and he was beginning to trap himself behind doors and in corners and couldn't figure out how to get out of them.
Last week Monday we took him to the vet and he crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
Thus we went from a family of three doggies to a family of two doggies.
And that may drop to one soon.
Also a few weeks ago, our youngest, our blue tick hound Rupert, developed a cough. We left him at the vet for most of the day Monday (this week) for observation, the vet suspected it might be a dental abscess that was draining and triggering the cough, he was going to go in for a formal appointment on Friday. His appetite has been a bit off, which could be consistent with an abscess.
Last night Russet took Rupert and Charlie, our other poodle, for a late-night walk. When they got back, Rupert had a coughing bout. And coughed up some blood.
Russet had spotted a small spot of blood on the carpet a couple of weeks ago and thought it might have been something that Dante coughed up, now we think it was more likely to have been produced by Rupert.
This morning Russet calls our vet. She wants Rupert to have a heart x-ray to see if he might have worms. I call two clinics in Alamo as our vet doesn't have a machine, I'm able to get an appointment for this afternoon. I take the dogs by myself as Russet is totally zapped from getting no sleep last night and having to do some pretty terrible phone work this morning in addition to dealing with the vet.
I take Charlie as he'll need testing if Rupert has worms or certain other problems.
X-ray and blood work show no worms, which is good. Charlie has nothing other than his weight taken.
X-ray does show Rupert has cancer.
A couple spots on his heart, spots on his spine, and it's possible that one lobe of his lung is completely occluded.
Images will be sent off to a specialist for further study, Russet will talk to our vet about palliative care.
As far as we can tell, Rupert is in no pain, but he was definitely a little hesitant jumping into the car this afternoon, where even last Monday he just leapt in. He may be feeling it.
We don't consider treatment to be much of an option. He's a large dog, twelve years old, and treatment would not add years and vigor to his life. Personally, having seen first-hand what my dad and others went through with chemo and radiation treatment, with Rupert's cancer having already spread so much I just think it would be cruelty to subject him to it.
So it's likely we'll become a one-dog family in the not distant future, which is going to crush me yet again.
I called Terry, a long-time friend who gave us Rupert about seven years ago. Terry and his wife rescued Rupert when he lived in Omaha. They literally stole him from the garage of a man who kept him chained in a hot, unventilated garage with no water. His wife absolutely loved Rupert, and then a few years ago, quite out of the blue, she passed away in the middle of the night. We kept Rupert for a little while when Terry was relocating to the Phoenix area, he was staying with his sister who had cats. Terry was able to rehome Rupert with his brother who lived on the other side of town. And then his brother died rather unexpectedly. We became Rupert's permanent home at that point. He got along fabulously well with Dante during his initial stay with us, we acquired Charlie while Rupert was with Terry's brother. There was never much friction between our boys.
Terry was saddened, but deserved to know as he has close ties to Rupert and would often come and see him when we brought him to town, and I'll be keeping him informed as we get more information. I'm needing to get a repair done to my car that I'll probably have done in Phoenix, I'll see about moving up the timetable on that as soon as we get the report back from the specialist on the x-rays and give Terry a last visit with Ru.
*sigh*
