Bailey

I miss my sweet baby so much. But I am so glad that we decided to amputate his leg a year and a half ago. Yes, 1.5years!!! They gave him a 3-6 month estimate, probably closer to 6. Boy, didn’t he impress his doctor!!! She kept on calling him her miracle dog. The only treatment we did cancer wise was the amputation.

His recovery from surgery went very well and he was up and at it in no time. He was still able to steal food off of the counter and put his front paw up on my shoulder. He really didn’t slow down at all.

We had one scare when all of a sudden he stopped eating, threw up what he did eat and could barely stand up without falling down. We thought the worst and were preparing to say goodbye. Turns out all he had was an ear infection that made him dizzy and nauseous. Phew!!

Then at about June he started to slowly go down hill. He was growing a new tumor on his hip on the same side as amputation. This sucker was fast growing too. But he still was doing relatively well. His legs were getting swollen so they put him on steroids. They did the trick! The swelling was gone, he was able to get around a little easier and he had a new appetite for food that we hadn’t seen in a while.

While they were beneficial they also started to make his muscles in his head change and that in combo with the cancer was effecting one of his eyes. So the vet gave us some drops to help which did make an improvement. He was getting a little more sluggish and needed help getting up more often. Still we felt his good days were more than his bad days. The vet felt that we should make a decision soon but he kept on pepping back up. Then Saturday I noticed that he wasn’t as interested in food. He would take a few bites and had no trouble keeping it down, he just didn’t want much.  Even bread (which he usually loves) wasn’t fully appealing to him. I talked to my husband and we decided that Monday would be the day. We would have our vet come to the house and put him to sleep after the kids went to school. They are so young and we didn’t want them seeing it. I read them a book about dogs going to Heaven that day. My husband and I both had to work Saturday evening. We got a text from our sitter that he was breathing hard and had urinated on himself. In the process of her getting towels under him, he took his last breath. She said it was only about 20 minutes from the start of the labored breathing to the end.

We came home after work and spent a little time with him before my husband transferred him to a 24 hour vet to await cremation. I brought back his ashes, paw prints and a lock of fur on Wednesday. Man I miss him so much already. I knew that this day was coming for a while and I feel like we had so much quantity and quality than we should have expected but it is still something that you are just never ready for. He was always there for us and was such a gentle and loving dog, a constant companion. He would have turned 15 on September 24th.

Just last Monday we discovered that our 12 year old yellow lab had a bone tumor.  I was blindsided when I got the news.  He had been limping on and off (but mostly off) for about a month.  I didn’t think too much of it until that morning when he started crying out and wouldn’t bear weight on it at all.  We headed to the vet and they decided to do some x-rays.  I never thought that it was going to be the diagnosis that we had.  We are still waiting for biopsy results but as of now we are assuming that he has osteosarcoma.  At first we thought that we were just going to do pain management with medicine, it seemed like it was going to be too hard on him to put him through surgery.  But then I spoke to more and more vets and all but one strongly suggested the amputation to spare him the pain and possible future fracture.  They were right, he was feeling so much pain already and it was only going to get worse as time went on.   Bailey is such an active dog that I was afraid he was going to be too hard on himself and break it.

After tremendous contemplation, we decided to go with our normal vet and then have him watched overnight at a 24 hour clinic.  I was very nervous about the decision not to go with a board surgeon but the price tag wasn’t something we could easily afford.  The night before the surgery we showed our oldest son videos of tripawd dogs and asked him if he noticed anything about the videos.  He kept on pointing out the color of the dog, his spots, that he was in the snow and looked happy but kept on missing the obvious.  We finally asked him to count the dogs legs and that is when he finally noticed.  We explained that our Bailey was going to be like that the next day and that he needed to be careful with him.  He seemed to understand, I am happy we were able to share the videos with him and prepare him.  Before I went to bed I got lots of hugs from my Bailey boy, literally with his paws on my shoulder.  I wanted to get as much in because I didn’t think he would be able to do that anymore once one of his front legs was gone.  I stayed up late getting great tips from some of the other tripawd members and then called it a night.  I dropped him off in the morning and was able to hold it together until after he left the room.  On the way out the receptionist informed me that her lab went through the same thing.  She said she put up baby gates to keep her tripawd away from her other two labs.  But before she was even able to shut her front door, her baby had jumped right over the baby gate.  She said the dog did very well and lived 8 months before the cancer got her.  I am hoping that we have 8 or more months and beat the odds some.

Bailey’s surgery went very well and his first night was smooth.  The next morning he walked himself into the vets office, ate some food and went on a walk.  I was so excited to go and see him.  When they brought him out, I was so surprised to see how well he was doing.  He had not really slowed down too much at all.  He has a very big incision but it looks clean.  The vet made him a little bandage sleeve to wear.  I brought over a reusable shopping bag, cut open.  The vet was actually quite impressed with that and I had to give the Tripawd community the credit.  We brought him out and immediately he wanted to christen the plants.  He seems to have a hard time with this since he lifts his rear left leg, putting most of the weight on the right front leg which is now missing.  The vet said he will have to figure it out eventually by either squatting, switching to the other leg or finding a new balance.  He enjoyed some scrambled eggs for dinner and had another dose of pain medicine and seems to be doing very well.  Oh and that paw on the shoulders hug…he did it right in the exam room.  I also thought we wouldn’t have to worry about him getting food off of the counter anymore but it seems I am wrong on that one as well.  This evening he put his remaining front paw right up on the counter and looked for food.  Truly amazing!

Let me try this video thing again….

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