FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS CUTE!!

[09vdubgti]

This was from not 2020 xmas but a christmas or two before. Think they took like um 50 photos or so, and they gave up lol. My dog didnt like this experience haha. Only decent pic we got.

[ChrisoftheNorth]

This was from not 2020 xmas but a christmas or two before. Think they took like um 50 photos or so, and they gave up lol. My dog didnt like this experience haha. Only decent pic we got.

Still cute AF. My dog would react the same.

[wap]

This was from not 2020 xmas but a christmas or two before. Think they took like um 50 photos or so, and they gave up lol. My dog didnt like this experience haha. Only decent pic we got.

Damn, anyone ever tell you that you look a lot like Santa Claus?

[09vdubgti]

hahaha...

I didnt even get a chance to get in the picture, she was trying her best to get out of it LOL.

[coogles]

What's up guys. Long post incoming. Thank you for reading if you do, and I'm sorry for using this place as my space to vent but, I need it right now.

On Monday of last week my dog didn't eat his breakfast, which I thought was odd since he's almost never been one to pass up his food, but he came back to it around noon and I thought "no big deal". We even did a 2.5 mile walk that afternoon and he seemed totally fine. He didn't eat dinner that night, which again I thought was weird but he'd also eaten his first meal so late that I wasn't super concerned. Tuesday morning I opened a fresh pack of Farmer's Dog and he scarfed his breakfast, so I figured everything was normal. Our walk got cut short due to rain but he seemed fine then too. But then at dinner he just picked around the edges of his bowl, and as the evening wore on he seemed really fatigued in hindsight. I woke up Wednesday morning expecting to take him for a walk, but it was pouring down rain, though usually when I get up he would follow me downstairs to go out. That morning he just laid in his bed and I had to coax him to come down. Maybe because of the rain(?) I thought. At breakfast he seemed strange, very on edge, and this time he wouldn't eat a thing. He wouldn't even the eggs off of my plate, a usual favorite.

We finished getting the kids whisked off to school, and as soon as I got back to the car after drop-off I called our vet. They had a slot open at 11am, so I brought him in then. He seemed sluggish but didn't appear to be in physical pain, I wasn't overwhelmingly concerned. When we got there they wanted to run a blood panel on him, which was included in our plan anyway. The results were supposed to take around 30 minutes, so after they got his blood sample I took him outside to walk around. Now, though, the guy hardly wanted to do more than stand there. He followed me around a bit, but it was clear he wasn't interested in walking. He kept stopping and looking up at me like "Dad, I just want to lay down." Now I was worried.

I sat with him on the curb for a bit and then went back into the lobby, I really didn't feel like sitting in a tiny exam room now. Not long after our vet came out with the results from the blood panel. He was anemic, and he showed me his pale gums. His red blood cell count was low but his new red cell count was high. The vet explained this as a good thing, it meant his bone marrow was making new red blood cells as needed to replenish the ones he was losing. He explained that this is often caused by an autoimmune issue where a dog's immune system will attack its own red blood cells, which can be treated by medication. I was feeling a bit better, and the vet offered he could subscribe that medication, administer the first dose, and we could be on our way. He did suggest the best standard of care would be to take him to the nearest animal hospital, and that's what I opted to do.

By the time we got there our vet had sent over his whole file and, after a brief check-in, they took him back around 1:30pm. They came to us to let us know that while he wasn't crashing, they were pretty concerned, so they put him on an IV and started their exam. The doc came back after what seemed like an eternity and started talking through the initial diagnosis. She was convinced that he was bleeding internally due to the low platelet count noted on the blood panel, which our regular vet never touched on. She was convinced he had a cancerous tumor that was bleeding out, and the first check was to x-ray his chest since that's usually where the cancer spreads. We didn't get the x-ray results until 3:45pm. I must have paced up and down the parking lot 100 times, coming in periodically to check in at the front desk to see if they had anything yet, and finally the doc came back with news. The x-ray results were negative, which I was told was good and bad. It meant that any cancer, if there was any, hadn't spread to his heart or lungs, but it didn't rule out bleeding elsewhere. She suggested the next course of action was to ultrasound his abdomen, which I immediately agreed to. The ultrasound results didn't come back until about 5:00pm, an absolute eternity.

We got the absolute worst news, Cooper had a tumor on his spleen that had burst and was bleeding into his abdomen. Without immediate action he probably wouldn't have long, in fact sometimes when this happens the dog can die in less than an hour. Fine one minute, collapsed and gone the next. The doctor further explained that when one of these splenic tumors bursts it's almost always cancer, she also volunteered that at his age (12 1/2), she had never seen one come back as benign. They could do a splenectomy, but it was going to cost $5,000 - $7,000 depending on the number of transfusions needed. Prognosis even with surgery was dire. A cancerous tumor had just burst in his abdomen, spreading cancerous cells everywhere and the cancer had also likely spread to his nearby liver. Assuming he made it through surgery, without chemo he may have as little as an extra 3 weeks, with chemo, maybe 6 months at most.

I made the decision to let him go, and they brought him to me at 5:55pm after doing some paperwork (again taking forever). My wife had left to pick up the kids from school and take them home at about 3:00 since we drove down together - in the moment we never imagined we'd be there for very long, we figured they'd run a few tests and send him on his way with the medication our vet had described. Our neighbor's daughter came over to watch the kids and my wife made it to the hospital at 6:24pm. Those 30 minutes were excruciating, I just wanted to end his suffering but I didn't want my wife to not get the chance to say goodbye. The doc came in a few minutes later, and not long after he breathed his last breath laying in my lap.

Cooper was genuinely my best friend other than my wife. He was my first dog, and I was his person. When I took a new job in 2014 I got assigned three territories for our business. They were our smallest three, but our team managed the quarterly business reviews and that meant I had three to prepare, while my two peers each only had one. By the time I had all of the needed information from finance and accounting, I only had a few days to prepare the three presentations. One night I was up late working on them, by this time it was well after midnight, and I heard the tick-tick-tick of his claws across the hardwood coming toward the bedroom we were using as an office at the time. He came up and put his paws and chin on my leg and so I picked him up and put him on my lap. He sat down, put his chin on my shoulder, and he stayed there for the next two hours while I worked until I was done for the night. From that moment on, he was mine.

And now, because I can't leave well enough alone, I've started reading more about these splenic tumors in dogs. Turns out, this kind of cancer isn't common in schnauzers. In fact, I found this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6265589/) that found, of the 6 schnauzers with splenic masses, only one was cancerous. They did also find that only 5 out of 22 that presented with anemia had benign tumors, but it's possible. They found minimal difference in age between those with benign versus malignant tumors. Other articles suggest up to 1/3rd of these tumors that burst are benign. In the moment I wasn't at all in the head space to do this kind of reading. I was relying on the expert in front of me and I didn't want him to suffer. But now I feel like there's a real possibility I let my dog go with a benign tumor. Fuck the money, I should have given him a chance. I'm a fucking mess, and I just got a call that his ashes are ready to pick up.

Rest in peace, buddy.

[golftdibrad1]

What's up guys. Long post incoming. Thank you for reading if you do, and I'm sorry for using this place as my space to vent but, I need it right now.

On Monday of last week my dog didn't eat his breakfast, which I thought was odd since he's almost never been one to pass up his food, but he came back to it around noon and I thought "no big deal". We even did a 2.5 mile walk that afternoon and he seemed totally fine. He didn't eat dinner that night, which again I thought was weird but he'd also eaten his first meal so late that I wasn't super concerned. Tuesday morning I opened a fresh pack of Farmer's Dog and he scarfed his breakfast, so I figured everything was normal. Our walk got cut short due to rain but he seemed fine then too. But then at dinner he just picked around the edges of his bowl, and as the evening wore on he seemed really fatigued in hindsight. I woke up Wednesday morning expecting to take him for a walk, but it was pouring down rain, though usually when I get up he would follow me downstairs to go out. That morning he just laid in his bed and I had to coax him to come down. Maybe because of the rain(?) I thought. At breakfast he seemed strange, very on edge, and this time he wouldn't eat a thing. He wouldn't even the eggs off of my plate, a usual favorite.

We finished getting the kids whisked off to school, and as soon as I got back to the car after drop-off I called our vet. They had a slot open at 11am, so I brought him in then. He seemed sluggish but didn't appear to be in physical pain, I wasn't overwhelmingly concerned. When we got there they wanted to run a blood panel on him, which was included in our plan anyway. The results were supposed to take around 30 minutes, so after they got his blood sample I took him outside to walk around. Now, though, the guy hardly wanted to do more than stand there. He followed me around a bit, but it was clear he wasn't interested in walking. He kept stopping and looking up at me like "Dad, I just want to lay down." Now I was worried.

I sat with him on the curb for a bit and then went back into the lobby, I really didn't feel like sitting in a tiny exam room now. Not long after our vet came out with the results from the blood panel. He was anemic, and he showed me his pale gums. His red blood cell count was low but his new red cell count was high. The vet explained this as a good thing, it meant his bone marrow was making new red blood cells as needed to replenish the ones he was losing. He explained that this is often caused by an autoimmune issue where a dog's immune system will attack its own red blood cells, which can be treated by medication. I was feeling a bit better, and the vet offered he could subscribe that medication, administer the first dose, and we could be on our way. He did suggest the best standard of care would be to take him to the nearest animal hospital, and that's what I opted to do.

By the time we got there our vet had sent over his whole file and, after a brief check-in, they took him back around 1:30pm. They came to us to let us know that while he wasn't crashing, they were pretty concerned, so they put him on an IV and started their exam. The doc came back after what seemed like an eternity and started talking through the initial diagnosis. She was convinced that he was bleeding internally due to the low platelet count noted on the blood panel, which our regular vet never touched on. She was convinced he had a cancerous tumor that was bleeding out, and the first check was to x-ray his chest since that's usually where the cancer spreads. We didn't get the x-ray results until 3:45pm. I must have paced up and down the parking lot 100 times, coming in periodically to check in at the front desk to see if they had anything yet, and finally the doc came back with news. The x-ray results were negative, which I was told was good and bad. It meant that any cancer, if there was any, hadn't spread to his heart or lungs, but it didn't rule out bleeding elsewhere. She suggested the next course of action was to ultrasound his abdomen, which I immediately agreed to. The ultrasound results didn't come back until about 5:00pm, an absolute eternity.

We got the absolute worst news, Cooper had a tumor on his spleen that had burst and was bleeding into his abdomen. Without immediate action he probably wouldn't have long, in fact sometimes when this happens the dog can die in less than an hour. Fine one minute, collapsed and gone the next. The doctor further explained that when one of these splenic tumors bursts it's almost always cancer, she also volunteered that at his age (12 1/2), she had never seen one come back as benign. They could do a splenectomy, but it was going to cost $5,000 - $7,000 depending on the number of transfusions needed. Prognosis even with surgery was dire. A cancerous tumor had just burst in his abdomen, spreading cancerous cells everywhere and the cancer had also likely spread to his nearby liver. Assuming he made it through surgery, without chemo he may have as little as an extra 3 weeks, with chemo, maybe 6 months at most.

I made the decision to let him go, and they brought him to me at 5:55pm after doing some paperwork (again taking forever). My wife had left to pick up the kids from school and take them home at about 3:00 since we drove down together - in the moment we never imagined we'd be there for very long, we figured they'd run a few tests and send him on his way with the medication our vet had described. Our neighbor's daughter came over to watch the kids and my wife made it to the hospital at 6:24pm. Those 30 minutes were excruciating, I just wanted to end his suffering but I didn't want my wife to not get the chance to say goodbye. The doc came in a few minutes later, and not long after he breathed his last breath laying in my lap.

Cooper was genuinely my best friend other than my wife. He was my first dog, and I was his person. When I took a new job in 2014 I got assigned three territories for our business. They were our smallest three, but our team managed the quarterly business reviews and that meant I had three to prepare, while my two peers each only had one. By the time I had all of the needed information from finance and accounting, I only had a few days to prepare the three presentations. One night I was up late working on them, by this time it was well after midnight, and I heard the tick-tick-tick of his claws across the hardwood coming toward the bedroom we were using as an office at the time. He came up and put his paws and chin on my leg and so I picked him up and put him on my lap. He sat down, put his chin on my shoulder, and he stayed there for the next two hours while I worked until I was done for the night. From that moment on, he was mine.

And now, because I can't leave well enough alone, I've started reading more about these splenic tumors in dogs. Turns out, this kind of cancer isn't common in schnauzers. In fact, I found this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6265589/) that found, of the 6 schnauzers with splenic masses, only one was cancerous. They did also find that only 5 out of 22 that presented with anemia had benign tumors, but it's possible. They found minimal difference in age between those with benign versus malignant tumors. Other articles suggest up to 1/3rd of these tumors that burst are benign. In the moment I wasn't at all in the head space to do this kind of reading. I was relying on the expert in front of me and I didn't want him to suffer. But now I feel like there's a real possibility I let my dog go with a benign tumor. Fuck the money, I should have given him a chance. I'm a fucking mess, and I just got a call that his ashes are ready to pick up.

Rest in peace, buddy.

Dang, sorry my dude. always hurts big when the doggo has to go. Dont beat yourself up about NIH studies with terrible sample sizes that are breed specific (ie highly doubtful they are meaningful) , your buddy was old and may not have even survived the surgery itself given the trauma. Stay strong.

[Desertbreh]

Sorry boss. Correct decision but it's never easy. We still haven't gotten back in the saddle after losing our two dogs a couple of years ago, in part to avoid another loss.

[Johnny_P]

I’m sorry coogles. Sounds like he was a great dog.

[max225]

What's up guys. Long post incoming. Thank you for reading if you do, and I'm sorry for using this place as my space to vent but, I need it right now.

On Monday of last week my dog didn't eat his breakfast, which I thought was odd since he's almost never been one to pass up his food, but he came back to it around noon and I thought "no big deal". We even did a 2.5 mile walk that afternoon and he seemed totally fine. He didn't eat dinner that night, which again I thought was weird but he'd also eaten his first meal so late that I wasn't super concerned. Tuesday morning I opened a fresh pack of Farmer's Dog and he scarfed his breakfast, so I figured everything was normal. Our walk got cut short due to rain but he seemed fine then too. But then at dinner he just picked around the edges of his bowl, and as the evening wore on he seemed really fatigued in hindsight. I woke up Wednesday morning expecting to take him for a walk, but it was pouring down rain, though usually when I get up he would follow me downstairs to go out. That morning he just laid in his bed and I had to coax him to come down. Maybe because of the rain(?) I thought. At breakfast he seemed strange, very on edge, and this time he wouldn't eat a thing. He wouldn't even the eggs off of my plate, a usual favorite.

We finished getting the kids whisked off to school, and as soon as I got back to the car after drop-off I called our vet. They had a slot open at 11am, so I brought him in then. He seemed sluggish but didn't appear to be in physical pain, I wasn't overwhelmingly concerned. When we got there they wanted to run a blood panel on him, which was included in our plan anyway. The results were supposed to take around 30 minutes, so after they got his blood sample I took him outside to walk around. Now, though, the guy hardly wanted to do more than stand there. He followed me around a bit, but it was clear he wasn't interested in walking. He kept stopping and looking up at me like "Dad, I just want to lay down." Now I was worried.

I sat with him on the curb for a bit and then went back into the lobby, I really didn't feel like sitting in a tiny exam room now. Not long after our vet came out with the results from the blood panel. He was anemic, and he showed me his pale gums. His red blood cell count was low but his new red cell count was high. The vet explained this as a good thing, it meant his bone marrow was making new red blood cells as needed to replenish the ones he was losing. He explained that this is often caused by an autoimmune issue where a dog's immune system will attack its own red blood cells, which can be treated by medication. I was feeling a bit better, and the vet offered he could subscribe that medication, administer the first dose, and we could be on our way. He did suggest the best standard of care would be to take him to the nearest animal hospital, and that's what I opted to do.

By the time we got there our vet had sent over his whole file and, after a brief check-in, they took him back around 1:30pm. They came to us to let us know that while he wasn't crashing, they were pretty concerned, so they put him on an IV and started their exam. The doc came back after what seemed like an eternity and started talking through the initial diagnosis. She was convinced that he was bleeding internally due to the low platelet count noted on the blood panel, which our regular vet never touched on. She was convinced he had a cancerous tumor that was bleeding out, and the first check was to x-ray his chest since that's usually where the cancer spreads. We didn't get the x-ray results until 3:45pm. I must have paced up and down the parking lot 100 times, coming in periodically to check in at the front desk to see if they had anything yet, and finally the doc came back with news. The x-ray results were negative, which I was told was good and bad. It meant that any cancer, if there was any, hadn't spread to his heart or lungs, but it didn't rule out bleeding elsewhere. She suggested the next course of action was to ultrasound his abdomen, which I immediately agreed to. The ultrasound results didn't come back until about 5:00pm, an absolute eternity.

We got the absolute worst news, Cooper had a tumor on his spleen that had burst and was bleeding into his abdomen. Without immediate action he probably wouldn't have long, in fact sometimes when this happens the dog can die in less than an hour. Fine one minute, collapsed and gone the next. The doctor further explained that when one of these splenic tumors bursts it's almost always cancer, she also volunteered that at his age (12 1/2), she had never seen one come back as benign. They could do a splenectomy, but it was going to cost $5,000 - $7,000 depending on the number of transfusions needed. Prognosis even with surgery was dire. A cancerous tumor had just burst in his abdomen, spreading cancerous cells everywhere and the cancer had also likely spread to his nearby liver. Assuming he made it through surgery, without chemo he may have as little as an extra 3 weeks, with chemo, maybe 6 months at most.

I made the decision to let him go, and they brought him to me at 5:55pm after doing some paperwork (again taking forever). My wife had left to pick up the kids from school and take them home at about 3:00 since we drove down together - in the moment we never imagined we'd be there for very long, we figured they'd run a few tests and send him on his way with the medication our vet had described. Our neighbor's daughter came over to watch the kids and my wife made it to the hospital at 6:24pm. Those 30 minutes were excruciating, I just wanted to end his suffering but I didn't want my wife to not get the chance to say goodbye. The doc came in a few minutes later, and not long after he breathed his last breath laying in my lap.

Cooper was genuinely my best friend other than my wife. He was my first dog, and I was his person. When I took a new job in 2014 I got assigned three territories for our business. They were our smallest three, but our team managed the quarterly business reviews and that meant I had three to prepare, while my two peers each only had one. By the time I had all of the needed information from finance and accounting, I only had a few days to prepare the three presentations. One night I was up late working on them, by this time it was well after midnight, and I heard the tick-tick-tick of his claws across the hardwood coming toward the bedroom we were using as an office at the time. He came up and put his paws and chin on my leg and so I picked him up and put him on my lap. He sat down, put his chin on my shoulder, and he stayed there for the next two hours while I worked until I was done for the night. From that moment on, he was mine.

And now, because I can't leave well enough alone, I've started reading more about these splenic tumors in dogs. Turns out, this kind of cancer isn't common in schnauzers. In fact, I found this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6265589/) that found, of the 6 schnauzers with splenic masses, only one was cancerous. They did also find that only 5 out of 22 that presented with anemia had benign tumors, but it's possible. They found minimal difference in age between those with benign versus malignant tumors. Other articles suggest up to 1/3rd of these tumors that burst are benign. In the moment I wasn't at all in the head space to do this kind of reading. I was relying on the expert in front of me and I didn't want him to suffer. But now I feel like there's a real possibility I let my dog go with a benign tumor. Fuck the money, I should have given him a chance. I'm a fucking mess, and I just got a call that his ashes are ready to pick up.

Rest in peace, buddy.

Fuck this is a lot to unpack. That's an awful decision to make and horrible to have the pups life end so abruptly.

[D Griff]

fuck man. I'm sorry. Terrible loss, I can relate on the dog being my best friend 100%, they are incredible companions.

Definitely agreed with Brad on not beating yourself up here, very sadly there's nothing you can really do. My wife's dog of around the same age was lost in a very similar way. She was all good and went from energetic and happy to could barely move in a day or two, some sort of burst tumor in her as well and the vet at the time gave us a very similar prognosis. She was a lassa opso.

[SAWCE]

Fuck man. I’m sorry. That’s rough. I’m glad you were able to be with him to give him that comfort and peace in those final moments.

[coogles]

Dang, sorry my dude. always hurts big when the doggo has to go. Dont beat yourself up about NIH studies with terrible sample sizes that are breed specific (ie highly doubtful they are meaningful) , your buddy was old and may not have even survived the surgery itself given the trauma. Stay strong.

It's just one study, one piece of information found among several others. Totally true that he may not have survived the surgery. Hindsight's a bitch, but I still wish I could back and change my decision.

[coogles]

Sorry boss. Correct decision but it's never easy. We still haven't gotten back in the saddle after losing our two dogs a couple of years ago, in part to avoid another loss.

I hear that. My parents had cats growing up and while losing one was always sad, it never hit me like losing a dog. Our other dog passed away back in March, she was my wife's dog. That one was harder, but still, we didn't have that same bond like Cooper and I did. This one is definitely different.

[coogles]

I’m sorry coogles. Sounds like he was a great dog.

Thanks Johnny. He really was.

[coogles]

fuck man. I'm sorry. Terrible loss, I can relate on the dog being my best friend 100%, they are incredible companions.

Definitely agreed with Brad on not beating yourself up here, very sadly there's nothing you can really do. My wife's dog of around the same age was lost in a very similar way. She was all good and went from energetic and happy to could barely move in a day or two, some sort of burst tumor in her as well and the vet at the time gave us a very similar prognosis. She was a lassa opso.

They really are. Sorry to hear you had to go through the same thing. After we lost our other dog a couple months ago, on more than one occasion Coop would be sitting on my lap and I'd find myself tearing up thinking about losing him too. I knew it would be hard, but I didn't really know just how hard it would be.

This explains it really well, I think.


When the kids were driving me up the wall and being shits, when my wife was pissed because of the kids or something I forgot to do, Coop was always there, unconditionally.

[coogles]

Fuck man. I’m sorry. That’s rough. I’m glad you were able to be with him to give him that comfort and peace in those final moments.

Thanks man. Me too.

[wap]

Sorry Coogs. That is by far the absolute WORST aspect of pet ownership, but at his age, you did the right thing. As was mentioned, he very well may not have survived the surgery and, even if he had, the few extra months of life he may have had would not have been fun or fulfilling for him. He'd be a very old dog with a long recovery from an intensive surgery, and then he would have passed anyway. You did the right thing FOR HIM. And that's the first responsibility as his person. Sucks, but I sincerely believe that. We went through the same thing when we put our rabbit down after 10 years. It was incredibly hard, but it was the right call for him.

[J-Ho-Fo-Show69]

Sorry bro. Loosing a good dog is the worst. I know someday I’ll have to deal with it with my mav, and almost couldn’t read your post. Ducking sucks

[Melon2.0]

It's an incredibly tough decision but you kept him from experiencing a lot of pain and discomfort.
I'm so sorry man, he seemed like the best.

[coogles]

Sorry Coogs. That is by far the absolute WORST aspect of pet ownership, but at his age, you did the right thing. As was mentioned, he very well may not have survived the surgery and, even if he had, the few extra months of life he may have had would not have been fun or fulfilling for him. He'd be a very old dog with a long recovery from an intensive surgery, and then he would have passed anyway. You did the right thing FOR HIM. And that's the first responsibility as his person. Sucks, but I sincerely believe that. We went through the same thing when we put our rabbit down after 10 years. It was incredibly hard, but it was the right call for him.

Thanks man. I appreciate the thoughts, but I don't necessarily agree that his life couldn't have been fulfilling post-surgery. The more I've read, the more success stories I've found of dogs that had benign tumors and in some cases lived for multiple years post-surgery. Some, where the tumors were malignant and had metastasized, only had maybe 3 weeks. Either was possible.

He was the healthiest 12 1/2 year old dog I've known. I regularly got comments from people who otherwise would've thought him to be half his age. He chased tennis balls like a puppy and could knock out 3 miles jogging with me, no problem. I genuinely thought he could live to 17, 18 years old. It's unusual but it's not *that* crazy for small dogs.

There was no way to know for sure other than doing the surgery and then getting a biopsy on the spleen afterward. That seemed pointless given the feedback from the emergency vet in the moment, but obviously now I wish I would have made a different decision.

[coogles]

Sorry bro. Loosing a good dog is the worst. I know someday I’ll have to deal with it with my mav, and almost couldn’t read your post. Ducking sucks

Thanks brotha.

[coogles]

It's an incredibly tough decision but you kept him from experiencing a lot of pain and discomfort.
I'm so sorry man, he seemed like the best.

That much is true. He clearly wasn't doing well by the time a decision was made and I'm glad he was able to be with me and my wife in his final moments.

[MexicanYarisTK]

What's up guys. Long post incoming. Thank you for reading if you do, and I'm sorry for using this place as my space to vent but, I need it right now.

On Monday of last week my dog didn't eat his breakfast, which I thought was odd since he's almost never been one to pass up his food, but he came back to it around noon and I thought "no big deal". We even did a 2.5 mile walk that afternoon and he seemed totally fine. He didn't eat dinner that night, which again I thought was weird but he'd also eaten his first meal so late that I wasn't super concerned. Tuesday morning I opened a fresh pack of Farmer's Dog and he scarfed his breakfast, so I figured everything was normal. Our walk got cut short due to rain but he seemed fine then too. But then at dinner he just picked around the edges of his bowl, and as the evening wore on he seemed really fatigued in hindsight. I woke up Wednesday morning expecting to take him for a walk, but it was pouring down rain, though usually when I get up he would follow me downstairs to go out. That morning he just laid in his bed and I had to coax him to come down. Maybe because of the rain(?) I thought. At breakfast he seemed strange, very on edge, and this time he wouldn't eat a thing. He wouldn't even the eggs off of my plate, a usual favorite.

We finished getting the kids whisked off to school, and as soon as I got back to the car after drop-off I called our vet. They had a slot open at 11am, so I brought him in then. He seemed sluggish but didn't appear to be in physical pain, I wasn't overwhelmingly concerned. When we got there they wanted to run a blood panel on him, which was included in our plan anyway. The results were supposed to take around 30 minutes, so after they got his blood sample I took him outside to walk around. Now, though, the guy hardly wanted to do more than stand there. He followed me around a bit, but it was clear he wasn't interested in walking. He kept stopping and looking up at me like "Dad, I just want to lay down." Now I was worried.

I sat with him on the curb for a bit and then went back into the lobby, I really didn't feel like sitting in a tiny exam room now. Not long after our vet came out with the results from the blood panel. He was anemic, and he showed me his pale gums. His red blood cell count was low but his new red cell count was high. The vet explained this as a good thing, it meant his bone marrow was making new red blood cells as needed to replenish the ones he was losing. He explained that this is often caused by an autoimmune issue where a dog's immune system will attack its own red blood cells, which can be treated by medication. I was feeling a bit better, and the vet offered he could subscribe that medication, administer the first dose, and we could be on our way. He did suggest the best standard of care would be to take him to the nearest animal hospital, and that's what I opted to do.

By the time we got there our vet had sent over his whole file and, after a brief check-in, they took him back around 1:30pm. They came to us to let us know that while he wasn't crashing, they were pretty concerned, so they put him on an IV and started their exam. The doc came back after what seemed like an eternity and started talking through the initial diagnosis. She was convinced that he was bleeding internally due to the low platelet count noted on the blood panel, which our regular vet never touched on. She was convinced he had a cancerous tumor that was bleeding out, and the first check was to x-ray his chest since that's usually where the cancer spreads. We didn't get the x-ray results until 3:45pm. I must have paced up and down the parking lot 100 times, coming in periodically to check in at the front desk to see if they had anything yet, and finally the doc came back with news. The x-ray results were negative, which I was told was good and bad. It meant that any cancer, if there was any, hadn't spread to his heart or lungs, but it didn't rule out bleeding elsewhere. She suggested the next course of action was to ultrasound his abdomen, which I immediately agreed to. The ultrasound results didn't come back until about 5:00pm, an absolute eternity.

We got the absolute worst news, Cooper had a tumor on his spleen that had burst and was bleeding into his abdomen. Without immediate action he probably wouldn't have long, in fact sometimes when this happens the dog can die in less than an hour. Fine one minute, collapsed and gone the next. The doctor further explained that when one of these splenic tumors bursts it's almost always cancer, she also volunteered that at his age (12 1/2), she had never seen one come back as benign. They could do a splenectomy, but it was going to cost $5,000 - $7,000 depending on the number of transfusions needed. Prognosis even with surgery was dire. A cancerous tumor had just burst in his abdomen, spreading cancerous cells everywhere and the cancer had also likely spread to his nearby liver. Assuming he made it through surgery, without chemo he may have as little as an extra 3 weeks, with chemo, maybe 6 months at most.

I made the decision to let him go, and they brought him to me at 5:55pm after doing some paperwork (again taking forever). My wife had left to pick up the kids from school and take them home at about 3:00 since we drove down together - in the moment we never imagined we'd be there for very long, we figured they'd run a few tests and send him on his way with the medication our vet had described. Our neighbor's daughter came over to watch the kids and my wife made it to the hospital at 6:24pm. Those 30 minutes were excruciating, I just wanted to end his suffering but I didn't want my wife to not get the chance to say goodbye. The doc came in a few minutes later, and not long after he breathed his last breath laying in my lap.

Cooper was genuinely my best friend other than my wife. He was my first dog, and I was his person. When I took a new job in 2014 I got assigned three territories for our business. They were our smallest three, but our team managed the quarterly business reviews and that meant I had three to prepare, while my two peers each only had one. By the time I had all of the needed information from finance and accounting, I only had a few days to prepare the three presentations. One night I was up late working on them, by this time it was well after midnight, and I heard the tick-tick-tick of his claws across the hardwood coming toward the bedroom we were using as an office at the time. He came up and put his paws and chin on my leg and so I picked him up and put him on my lap. He sat down, put his chin on my shoulder, and he stayed there for the next two hours while I worked until I was done for the night. From that moment on, he was mine.

And now, because I can't leave well enough alone, I've started reading more about these splenic tumors in dogs. Turns out, this kind of cancer isn't common in schnauzers. In fact, I found this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6265589/) that found, of the 6 schnauzers with splenic masses, only one was cancerous. They did also find that only 5 out of 22 that presented with anemia had benign tumors, but it's possible. They found minimal difference in age between those with benign versus malignant tumors. Other articles suggest up to 1/3rd of these tumors that burst are benign. In the moment I wasn't at all in the head space to do this kind of reading. I was relying on the expert in front of me and I didn't want him to suffer. But now I feel like there's a real possibility I let my dog go with a benign tumor. Fuck the money, I should have given him a chance. I'm a fucking mess, and I just got a call that his ashes are ready to pick up.

Rest in peace, buddy.

That is a terrible loss coggles, he seemed to be on your side for the longest time. I know this must been a very difficult decision with not much to return

[coogles]

That is a terrible loss coggles, he seemed to be on your side for the longest time. I know this must been a very difficult decision with not much to return

Thanks. Genuinely feeling a bit better today. Maybe it was typing things out and talking through all of that with my wife as well. Maybe it was bringing his ashes home, as hard as that was. Not sure. Hoping that carries forward.