Anyone who says “it’s just a dog (or cat or whatever)” has clearly never loved one. We adopted Zoey and Chubs (mother and son) on May 12, 2011. Zoey was 5 and Chubs was 2. Fast forward through all the everyday stuff to a day in late October, 2018.
I took Zoey in for a vet visit for a lump that had been growing. Dr. Harmony ran some tests and recommended it be removed. We were going to be going to Stanford for Sierra in a week and didn’t want Moriah to have to deal with post-op care (which really would not have been a problem for her), so decided to wait until we got home. Zoey had been losing her eyesight and hearing for a few years by now. Shortly after we got home, she pretty much stopped eating and was throwing up. She didn’t want to go outside much and when she did, she came right back inside. We thought she was nearing the end of her life. She was at the top end of the life span for her breed. After a bit, she was mostly back to normal. Then we had winter and appointments and didn’t think much about the lump. Zoey seemed fine.
At the end of March, 2019, I made an appointment for her to have the lump reevaluated. We waited 2 weeks so we could see Dr. Harmony, since she had seen Zoey before. The appointment was April 10 and the lump clearly had grown in the 2 weeks we waited for the appointment. Zoey had stopped eating and was throwing up again. The next day we got the news that the lump was soft tissue sarcoma. I had to look it up. Cancer. Dr. Harmony said they could remove it, but would they probably would not be able to completely remove it. This might give Zoey another year. One of pain. What other decision could we make but to have her put down. I made the appointment for April 16. Zoey and Chubs got extra love and treats over the weekend. You know the rest, so I won’t go into it.
This morning I found out that the much loved dog of friends has been diagnosed with bone cancer. Their family is going through the devastation of that diagnosis.
This is not a hard decision. A hard decision is choosing between apple pie or pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. This is a devastating decision. My eyes are burning with tears for them.