Lost My Second Baby Monday Morning 1/27 Options

[Firehawk]

I am totally distraught. I just lost my second and final dog Monday around 1am.

I adopted 2 lab/keshond mixes in 2004, just after I moved out of my mothers and into a new home. They were 4 months old when i got them from a rescue place. I fell in love with them immediately. I also remember thinking (and periodically) that I would lose them one day. And those days have now come and gone. They were sisters. Ruby and Diamond.

I lost Ruby on Dec 20, 2012 just before Christmas, completely unexpectedly. It was about 7am, I was on christmas vacation. My wife had already gone to work (she's a teacher, it was her second to last day of school). I got up and found Ruby laying in the walk-in closet, which was very strange. I said "come on Ruby let's go eat". Her sister Diamond jumped up, but Ruby didn't move, just wagged her taiil slightly. I went over and helped her get up, thinking maybe she was just teasing me or her legs were hurting or something. She stood up, stumbled down the hall, then fell over.

I panicked. I got her in the car, and the nearest ER vet is 15 minutes drive. About half way there, she died in the car. She had a bowel movement and I knew she was gone. I was DEVASTATED. The vet couldn't really say what happened, but think a mass of some kind maybe burst, or a heart attack. She was healthy, not overweight, so I don't know. But she was my first to go.

But I had Diamond still, so she got double the love. I became very overprotective of her and the next day I called to get her in for a full checkup just to be cautious. On the examination, a small growth was found near her front teeth. The vet said it looked benign but wanted to send it out anyways just in case. It came back malignant malinoma. Again, DEVASTATED. So i got her into the oncologist vet. They did a CT scan of her jaw, and gave her 3-6 months to live, even if I did a jaw surgery and put her on a malignoma vaccine. They did'nt know if it had spread but they said we caught it very early, normally it's not caught that early.

So I opted to drop the 10,000 and do all of this. They cut out a small part of her upper jaw, she lost the canine tooth up front and the 4 insicors or whatever, but otherwise you coudln't really tell she had surgery. They got good margins. They also took out her lymphnode on that side and it came back negative, so no cancer had spread. They wouldn't say she was cured, but I believe she was. I put her on a cancer diet anyways, and kept her on the expensive vaccine (booster every 6 months 600 bucks each). I cooked every meal for 7 or 8 months, chicken, sweet potatoes primarily, olive oil...etc. She loved it.

She had just been to the vet for a skin infection which she would commonly get. she was suspectible to allergies and such, ear infections most of her life. So it wasn't shocking to have these issues. But about 3-4 weeks ago she wa at the vet. No problems.

Since my first dog had died, I had grown those 'parental ears' that hear everything at night. If my dog was licking i'd wake up. Anything.

January 27 at around 1am both my wife and I woke up to her breathing really shallow and fast. It wasn't normal at all. We peaked to see her laying on her side eyes wide open, breathing like that. I immediately panicked. It brought back bad memories from my first one dying. Diamond had also pooped, which scared me because I took it as a sign of death coming. My wife is a trained professional to handle crisis situations so she did'nt panic, she just said "ok let's just get her going to the vet". Of course it's a blizzard out, 1am, nothing plowed (thanks God), and 15 minutes to the nearest emergency vet (in good weather). We hurried as fast as possible. I sat in the back with her on the way, and she was alive, her head on my lap. I just kept telling her to hold on and that i love her.

We got her there, and I rushed her into the vet. Put her on the table, and walked out. A minute or two later the vet came out and said that her heart had stopped and asked if I wanted them to do CPR. I said YES of course. Did'nt know what was going on. Another minute or two later the vet came back out and said that she's showing signs that she's gone, and they could continue but there is a lot of fluid in her abdnomen and they believe she had a mass on her spleen rupture, which is fairly common. I chose to let her go. Heartbroken.

I had her cremated and they brought her to me yesterday, in a really nice marble urn. It matches what I got for Ruby. This morning was the hardest morning of my life, becuase my routine was different. Diamond would always get up with me and sit against the chair watching me make breakfast. She'd always stay up until I left, then she would go back to bed. I don't know how to deal with this.

I am devastated, and I don't want to accept it. When I was having a major panic attack during this ordeal, I wanted to die. I wanted to go with her into death. They were my life. And I know that sounds bad because I have a wife but I had these dogs before i met my wife. 10 years. They went through alot with me over 10 years.

My wife and I don't even want to think about getting another pet. We both feel this is way too hard. Life has a way of making you accept things. Right now I don't want to accept it.

I'm in Michigan and there is still a lot of snow on the ground. I can still see Diamond's paw prints in the snow out back. We've cleaned up all of her stuff. I threw out all her meds that I had for her, we are giving the remaining food to the local shelter, and giving her beds away to family and friends. It is SOOOO hard to deal with this.

Dave

[Firehawk]

Hi KK,

I don't regret it one second that we got puppies. I have so fallen in love with them over the past 2 days now that it's crazy. I was apprehensive on the day we got them, and into half of the next day. I thought "oh my Gosh what did we get ourselves into?" And i caught myself comparing my passed away dogs to these puppies. It made me realize, just from the shear amount of work it takes to take on 9 week old pups, how calm and relaxed my labs were. I found myself doing too many comparisons, and it was making me sad to do that. So I then ended up thinking to myself that I should not be viewing these pups as replacements, but rather additions to the family. I joked the other day and said that they were the descendants of great labs...just trying to be funny. Monday night and into yesterday I just started falling in love with these puppies and now I am all in.

I would never go back. I found myself texting my wife every 20-30 minutes while I was at work, asking her how they are doing (the dogs, I don't care what my wife is doing hahaha).

The girl, darla, has already established that she is the alpha. She lets her brother tackle her and when he gets a little too tough she will turn from chirping to snarling and he takes off. It's hilarious, because he's like 80% heavier than her. She's 3lb 10oz and he's 6lb 4oz.

I think we have very intelligent puppies. Both of them learned to sit in the first day we had them. I couldn't believe it. The boy, Dudley, doesn't listen as well because he's more hyper, but he listens I'd say 50% of the time with the sit command and gesture. Darla listens about 80% of the time.

We introduced a bell on the patio door handle starting Monday afternoon and apparently Darla has learned in 24 hours what the bell is for. Yesterday she was playing with her brother, suddenly stopped, trotted to the patio door (about 30 feet away) and hit the bell. We let her out and she went poop and pee on the patio. My jaw dropped. I didn't know a puppy could learn somtehing that fast. She's done it twice, and her brother has done it once.

They aren't perfect, they are still having accidents in the house of course, but they are learning. Every time they go outside they try to pee and/or poop. So they've clearly learned what we want them to do out there. But they still think it's ok to go in the house, so we have to really be pre-emptive with them, otherwise they'll wander off out of the play area and go potty. We keep trying to get streaks going on how many times we can successfully get them to go outside before we slip up and they go in the house. We've gotten up to 3 straight times, but then usually we let a little too much time go by or are talking and one of them wanders to the outer area of the room and goes.

They are really social, and brave. I had these baby gates that cut off access to hallways, for 10 years and my labs never even so much as challenged them once. Dudley figured out how to get through it the first day we tried to use the gate. LOL Then Darla saw him do it and she did it. Darla likes to sleep alot. We are trying to keep her awake more during the day and let her go nuts late evening so she sleeps better in her crate through the night. If you are sitting on the floor with them, she will try to get on your lap and cuddle up and fall asleep. Then Dudley will come full speed and jump and try to do the same. It's so cute.

We are going to definitely need to make sure they are trained well. Beagles are great dogs and are notorious for getting into everything and following their nose everywhere. But that's what I wanted, smart, social dogs. So I'm very happy. The vet said we shouldn't let them sleep with us in bed until about 1 year old, when we trust them fully and they are matured. I can't wait for that, but at the same time I'm enjoying every moment of raising them. It's keeping me up alot at night, having to wake up every 2-3 hours to put them out because their bladders are so small, but it's worth it. I'll look back at these memories and miss this. I didn't even take my jacket off all of Monday because they have togo out about every 30-45 minutes right now when we are home during the day, and they are active.