Maggie’s Man's Best Friend Thread

...hard to tell peoples's age now a days, I'm 50 and without the whiskers get carded.
I envy you now. Before I was “Legal” to buy Alcohol, I had Peace Officers adding 15+ years to my age. It felt good to be asked my BD to purchase alcohol last week.

Siena, our latest Brittany lays on the back of the couch to look through the window so she Han bark at dogs and cats passing.
 
I envy you now. Before I was “Legal” to buy Alcohol, I had Peace Officers adding 15+ years to my age. It felt good to be asked my BD to purchase alcohol last week.

Siena, our latest Brittany lays on the back of the couch to look through the window so she Han bark at dogs and cats passing.
It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Not sure how I'd ever pass for someone under 21 at my age...maybe they have a policy to card everyone.
 
It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Not sure how I'd ever pass for someone under 21 at my age...maybe they have a policy to card everyone.
I feel better with that type of policy remembering my “youth”. It is sad when you don’t get carded in a college town when getting a case of beer and a roll of Copenhagen. My landlord’s wife tore them a new one after that hunting trip.🤣🤣

It didn’t help that all of my friends and hunting buddies were between 5 and 50 years older than me!🤣🤣😁

Including 3 Drill Instructors.
 
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Layla taking in the scenery and looking for something to chase after 🤦🏼‍♂️
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Three years ago today Miss Nova crossed the rainbow bridge. We still miss her.❤️
This one almost joined her Tuesday. I brought home a whole bag of @armorpl8chikn legs, probably 12-13 and gave her two, left the rest of the bag in the sink to drain and went out for an hour. Got back and let her out, noticed some blood on her paws, looked her over, didnt see anything so let it go. walked into the kitchen and heres a bag of chicken legs with only 3 left.. walked into her favorite sleeping spot and theres chicken bones all over the blanket. She was OK for a few hours until they started to digest, then went limp as a rag for 24 hours. Looking better today, starting to move around.

And yes, thats an original Colt 45 ACP mag on the footstool.
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This one almost joined her Tuesday. I brought home a whole bag of @armorpl8chikn legs, probably 12-13 and gave her two, left the rest of the bag in the sink to drain and went out for an hour. Got back and let her out, noticed some blood on her paws, looked her over, didnt see anything so let it go. walked into the kitchen and heres a bag of chicken legs with only 3 left.. walked into her favorite sleeping spot and theres chicken bones all over the blanket. She was OK for a few hours until they started to digest, then went limp as a rag for 24 hours. Looking better today, starting to move around.

And yes, thats an original Colt 45 ACP mag on the footstool.
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My Buddy has two Belgian Malinois, one ate a turtle out at the camp, the shell embedded the the dogs stomach, I think it died in his truck rushing him to the vet. I try not to leave anything "laying" around that the dog may eat. Hope she gets better! (y)
 
My Husky mix was the most non-traditional dog I've ever met. She was just Awesome though! Didn't care about chasing balls and wasn't food motivated at all. All she wanted to do is run...and she just never tired. At 13, she could easily outlast a 3-year-old Labrador. It was almost unreal.
 
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My Husky mix was the most non-traditional dog I've ever met. She was just Awesome though! Didn't care about chasing balls and wasn't food motivated at all. All she wanted to do is run...and she just never tired. At 13, she could easily outlast a 3-year-old Labrador. It was almost unreal.
I used to have a Husky/Akita mix named Sage. Sage was freaky smart. Could figure out most locking mechanisms. Could open any door or drawer. Loved to chase other critters but wouldn't catch them because that would end the chase.

One time Sage went after the neighbor's cat. She didn't chase it so much as figure out where the cat was headed to, then race the cat to it. In the end she had the cat running down the center of the street. Sage was just loping along behind it. Whenever it tried to slow down because it was too tired, Sage would bark at it to get it going again. Finally the cat just said "F--- You" and turned toward it's house to walk home. Sage let it go since it wasn't playing anymore.

Another time my best friend was teasing Sage with a stuffed toy. He was holding it above her reach. Sage stepped back and gave him a studious look up and down, did the math, and then nipped his balls. (She was gentle about it.) When Adrian's hands came down to cover up, Sage snatched the toy and proceeded to do her little victory dance around the yard with it.
 
Morris and Buddy.
=========================



On this day in 1928, Buddy, a German Shepherd, becomes the 1st guide dog for a US citizen Morris Frank.
Morris Frank was a blind man from Nashville. His father read him an article by Dorothy Eustis, a woman living in Switzerland who had seen shepherds training dogs to lead blind people get around. Excited by the idea, Frank wrote a letter to Eustis and received a response letter 30 days later inviting him to come see for himself. Frank then took a ship to Europe and trained extensively with a dog that had been bred specifically to lead a blind person. The training was hard, but after weeks with the dog, Frank could get around the nearby Swiss village holding tightly to a harness to which Buddy was strapped.
Morris Frank returned to America. From the day he got off the ship, he was successful. At one point, in front of a group of dumbfounded reporters, Buddy led Frank safely across a busy New York street. “I shall never forget the next three minutes, Ten-ton trucks rocketing past, cabs blowing their horns in our ears, drivers shouting at us. When we finally got to the other side, and I realized what a really magnificent job he had done” Frank later wrote.
When Frank returned to Nashville, people were amazed at the sight of the blind man and his dog successfully navigating busy sidewalks and couldn’t believe that it was the same blind boy they had so recently taken pity on. What amazed people the most was that Buddy had an ability best known as “intelligent disobedience,” which meant that he would obey Morris except when executing that command would result in harm to his master. If there was a low hanging branch ahead on the sidewalk, for instance, Buddy knew how to navigate around it to the point where Morris wouldn’t hurt his head on it.
About this time, Frank, Eustis and several others cofounded The Seeing Eye, an institution set up to train guide dogs and their blind masters. Today, the organization reports that it has, in its 80-year history, trained 14,000 dogs. Buddy is considered the first. In 1978, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the school, the U.S. issued a commemorative stamp in honor of The Seeing Eye.

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I've had dachshunds for decades and my wife grew up with them. My first male Albert Schaiman, named after my late wife's father during his passing, was my buddy for a long time.View attachment 8085410 He was such a little hellion that could charm anyone. Once he became an only child I experienced behavior problems and sought him a female companion. That's how Daisy fell into my lap via craigslist add that a friend found. View attachment 8085439Not being satisfied with a dog named Daisy, I gave her the last name of Cutter. Well her and Al became inseparable fast, she straightened his ass right out, and this was the unintended but not unwelcome consequence. View attachment 8085417
Though I lost Albert about 4 years ago when he died in my arms, that little dapply pup, Anabel, is still kicking with the gal that found me Daisy. View attachment 8085421
So now that I'm remarried, we've been talking about finding Daisy a little boy that she can help us to love before she's gone, for a couple years now. So my wife found this little goober yesterday to put a deposit on. Name TBD. So that's how he came to be. Sorry for all the weiner pics.
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So here's an update. He's got a name now, Leupold von Ranke after the father of primary source based historical research, because the wife and I are both historians. He's finally tuckered now from being a lil shit.
 

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A buddy of mine refers to GSD as Land sharks, well he got me using the term ( very applicable ). I found something at store I could not resist. I missed a lot of action pics, short version Yates was not liking the fin on him and that Rowdy was chasing him for the new chew toy attached to his shoulders. Give me a hard time for being the crazy dog guy, but it was funny .

The last pic of Yates says it all in his eyes "I am not amused, I will get even ". His right ear is finally up for the most part.

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This one almost joined her Tuesday. I brought home a whole bag of @armorpl8chikn legs, probably 12-13 and gave her two, left the rest of the bag in the sink to drain and went out for an hour. Got back and let her out, noticed some blood on her paws, looked her over, didnt see anything so let it go. walked into the kitchen and heres a bag of chicken legs with only 3 left.. walked into her favorite sleeping spot and theres chicken bones all over the blanket. She was OK for a few hours until they started to digest, then went limp as a rag for 24 hours. Looking better today, starting to move around.

And yes, thats an original Colt 45 ACP mag on the footstool.
View attachment 8129195
Update, $750 later in vet bills Nikita is well and sassy again. Bitch didnt learn though, found a bag of pretzels this morning.
 
That's a beautiful pup, ours is now 5 years and I think settled in at 125lb. They are a handful at that age:)
Thanks! I've been tracking him on the Waltham puppy growth chart and he's on track to be around the 80lb mark which would be just fine with me. He's already a handful. lol He took a resting ham off the stove sunday and got half of it down before I caught him snow plowing it across the floor eating as he went along. About an hour later it all came back up in two impressive piles on the rug. So naturally, like with our kids, I pretended it was going to make me puke and left so my wife would clean it up.
 
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Thanks! I've been tracking him on the Waltham puppy growth chart and he's on track to be around the 80lb mark which would be just fine with me. He's already a handful. lol He took a resting ham off the stove sunday and got half of it down before I caught him snow plowing it across the floor eating as he went along. About an hour later it all came back up in two impressive piles on the rug. So naturally, like with our kids, I pretended it was going to make me puke and left so my wife would clean it up.
Uff da, I can see that happening. At 10 months ours opened the door on my old Honda Accord and literally tore out the front drivers seat and ate some of it.....he was a project, being both papered and a rescue. But with patience he turned out to be a wonderful dog with all the traits we expect from a GSD. I wish you well with yours, just an awesome breed.
 
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This is Dollie, she was our 5 year old rough Collie that we had to make the hard decision to lay to rest yesterday. I met her for the first time almost 3 years ago when my now wife brought her with her on our first date and she has been with us ever since even being present for our engagement last year. She had many names, a super fluffy coat that left itself everywhere, an appetite as big as a buffalo, which she loved to eat, and a personality that she loved to share but only with people she knew. She has been predominantly trouble free with zero health issue until recently but the last couple months have been hell.

It started around Christmas, one day she started favoring her one rear leg after a walk with my Fiancé so we thought she just stubbed her leg while on the trail. After a couple days the limping stopped and she could run fine but she was still slow getting up from laying down. We took her to the vet but they checked and found nothing wrong. This continued for a couple more weeks until her legs started getting puffy but another trip to the vet and a blood test showed nothing abnormal.

Then at the end of February her face swelled up so we took her to the vet and she was given some steroids to help but the side effects were bad and the swelling went away so we stopped. At this point she started becoming more lethargic, she used to get super excited to chase deer but became much more subdued on walks and wasn’t as hyper around the house. Towards the end of March we took her for another vet visit with a full blood panel that showed she was a little anemic.

After that the month of April was one of the most stressful months of my life, not only were we finishing the final planning for our wedding but her health start to rapidly rapidly decline as well. We had set up a specialist vet appointment for mid April but at the end of March she started getting sick, first once a day and then multiple times a day at all hours. I was usually up at least 2 or 3 times a night to clean it up and she always looked so sad even though we knew and told her it wasn’t her fault. We tried different foods, going to multiple smaller meals even feeding her ground bison from my hunt last year just trying to find something she would keep down. By the time her vet appointment came around she was lethargic, having trouble breathing with a fever and her head had started to hollow out.

When we went to the vet appointment we were fully expecting a cancer diagnosis, they came back with aspiration pneumonia, megaesophagus and an underlying auto immune issue. Since all of these were possibly treatable we were glad to have a better diagnosis than we had expected but in the end and actual cancer diagnosis would have been better as we wouldn’t have spent another month, thousands of dollars in tests and treatments getting our hopes up only for it to fall apart again.

We were able to treat the pneumonia but the megaesophagus left her continuing to get sick and greatly increasing the risk of reasperating. Additionally while she was recovering we couldn’t do anything to curb her auto immune issue as doing so could compromise her pneumonia recovery. During this time she continued to lose weight, dropping from 85 to 65 pounds in only a couple weeks as her immune system began to eat at her muscles.

Just prior to our wedding she had started to level off, she wasn’t getting sick as much and it seemed like the medicine was helping. We left her with my mother in law who took good care of her during the week of our honeymoon. When we got back she had lost a little more weight but had otherwise not gotten much worse while we were gone. We had a vet appointment last Thursday to confirm we were cleared to start a steroid treatment to try and fix her immune system.

It didn’t work, neither steroid helped and on top of it she began throwing up again and started to have more labored breathing. I spent the weekend at home with her to monitor her as she spent the days laying around hoping that eventually the steroids would kick in and she would start to feel like her old self. Instead she continued to hollow out more each day and by Tuesday morning her head wasn’t much more than a skull with skin on it and her legs had almost no muscle left. We didn’t realize it at first but she had reasperated Friday giving herself pneumonia again and sending her immune system into overdrive which caused the rapid decline in muscle in only 4 days. At the end she was down to 55 pounds, down 30 pounds in a little over a month and a half even with us feeding her more than her normal amount of food.

So with her breathing that much more labored we took her to the ER yesterday afternoon to get her checked. The doctor had confirmed that she did in fact have pneumonia with very low oxygen levels and we realistically had two choices left. The first option was the spent close to $10,000 leaving her in the hospital for several days so that they could get rid of the pneumonia. The next step would be surgery to put a feeding tube into her stomach so that we could feed her intravenously to hopefully avoid her getting sick. For a dog that loved food as much as she did that would have been adding insult to injury. In the end we would be $20,000+ in the hole and still not have even touched the main autoimmune issue that caused everything in the first place. They still did not know what type of autoimmune issue she had and as such had no way to treat it.

In the end we chose the second option, to lay her to rest and end her suffering. We were both there for her and I got to hold her as she left us as my wife held her head and whispered to her as we said our goodbyes. As my first dog it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. We both know it was the right thing to do but it hasn’t made the last 30 hours any easier. I consider myself a rather strong person and not a lot generally gets to me but I haven’t cried this much since my grandfather passed away when I was 13.

She hadn’t been herself for a couple months and by the end would spend almost the entire day laying around the house or in the yard. She used to get super excited and zoom around the house and the yard when we got home, she would regularly sprint back and forth between us in the house for scratches, she was always on the couch with us if we were watching TV and she loved to snack on bacon, bison and beef. By the end she would barely look up at us when we walked in, she could barely muster a trot let alone a run and only for a couple feet at best, she couldn’t jump up on the couch any more and if she ate anything other than her special food she would throw up within a couple minutes.

So much about her personality had changed by the end that the only two constants were her absolute love of food and her absolute hatred of foxes. She loved food more than life itself and if she even considered you had food she would be by your side as your new best friend. Even the day she left us she still sat by us while we ate lunch hoping to get a snack. It killed me to not give her any table scraps because she would always throw it back up shortly after.

The other constant was her hated of foxes, she never really saw foxes with my wife prior to our meeting but at my house one played peek a boo with her through the fence one time and it was fight on sight from then on. If she so much as smelled the fox near the yard she was barking and more than a few times was I awoken at 3am because the fox screamed outside and she had to scream back. Even Friday night, with pneumonia starting to take hold and almost no muscle left she ran for the first time in months because a fox slipped under the fence when we let her out. Even with a good head start she almost caught it then barked and pranced back to the house looking happier than I’d seen her in a long time.

Tonight the house feels quiet, I know it’s going to take a while to heal, so many things in the house remind me of her. Even her paw prints that she left in the carpet yesterday right before we left leave me choked up when I walk by the room. I know this was a very long post but writing it down makes me feel a bit better so I figured I would share it all with you.

Rest in Peace Dollie, we love you and we miss you Miss Ma’am.
IMG_5254.jpeg
 
View attachment 8148649View attachment 8148650View attachment 8148651This is Dollie, she was our 5 year old rough Collie that we had to make the hard decision to lay to rest yesterday. I met her for the first time almost 3 years ago when my now wife brought her with her on our first date and she has been with us ever since even being present for our engagement last year. She had many names, a super fluffy coat that left itself everywhere, an appetite as big as a buffalo, which she loved to eat, and a personality that she loved to share but only with people she knew. She has been predominantly trouble free with zero health issue until recently but the last couple months have been hell.

It started around Christmas, one day she started favoring her one rear leg after a walk with my Fiancé so we thought she just stubbed her leg while on the trail. After a couple days the limping stopped and she could run fine but she was still slow getting up from laying down. We took her to the vet but they checked and found nothing wrong. This continued for a couple more weeks until her legs started getting puffy but another trip to the vet and a blood test showed nothing abnormal.

Then at the end of February her face swelled up so we took her to the vet and she was given some steroids to help but the side effects were bad and the swelling went away so we stopped. At this point she started becoming more lethargic, she used to get super excited to chase deer but became much more subdued on walks and wasn’t as hyper around the house. Towards the end of March we took her for another vet visit with a full blood panel that showed she was a little anemic.

After that the month of April was one of the most stressful months of my life, not only were we finishing the final planning for our wedding but her health start to rapidly rapidly decline as well. We had set up a specialist vet appointment for mid April but at the end of March she started getting sick, first once a day and then multiple times a day at all hours. I was usually up at least 2 or 3 times a night to clean it up and she always looked so sad even though we knew and told her it wasn’t her fault. We tried different foods, going to multiple smaller meals even feeding her ground bison from my hunt last year just trying to find something she would keep down. By the time her vet appointment came around she was lethargic, having trouble breathing with a fever and her head had started to hollow out.

When we went to the vet appointment we were fully expecting a cancer diagnosis, they came back with aspiration pneumonia, megaesophagus and an underlying auto immune issue. Since all of these were possibly treatable we were glad to have a better diagnosis than we had expected but in the end and actual cancer diagnosis would have been better as we wouldn’t have spent another month, thousands of dollars in tests and treatments getting our hopes up only for it to fall apart again.

We were able to treat the pneumonia but the megaesophagus left her continuing to get sick and greatly increasing the risk of reasperating. Additionally while she was recovering we couldn’t do anything to curb her auto immune issue as doing so could compromise her pneumonia recovery. During this time she continued to lose weight, dropping from 85 to 65 pounds in only a couple weeks as her immune system began to eat at her muscles.

Just prior to our wedding she had started to level off, she wasn’t getting sick as much and it seemed like the medicine was helping. We left her with my mother in law who took good care of her during the week of our honeymoon. When we got back she had lost a little more weight but had otherwise not gotten much worse while we were gone. We had a vet appointment last Thursday to confirm we were cleared to start a steroid treatment to try and fix her immune system.

It didn’t work, neither steroid helped and on top of it she began throwing up again and started to have more labored breathing. I spent the weekend at home with her to monitor her as she spent the days laying around hoping that eventually the steroids would kick in and she would start to feel like her old self. Instead she continued to hollow out more each day and by Tuesday morning her head wasn’t much more than a skull with skin on it and her legs had almost no muscle left. We didn’t realize it at first but she had reasperated Friday giving herself pneumonia again and sending her immune system into overdrive which caused the rapid decline in muscle in only 4 days. At the end she was down to 55 pounds, down 30 pounds in a little over a month and a half even with us feeding her more than her normal amount of food.

So with her breathing that much more labored we took her to the ER yesterday afternoon to get her checked. The doctor had confirmed that she did in fact have pneumonia with very low oxygen levels and we realistically had two choices left. The first option was the spent close to $10,000 leaving her in the hospital for several days so that they could get rid of the pneumonia. The next step would be surgery to put a feeding tube into her stomach so that we could feed her intravenously to hopefully avoid her getting sick. For a dog that loved food as much as she did that would have been adding insult to injury. In the end we would be $20,000+ in the hole and still not have even touched the main autoimmune issue that caused everything in the first place. They still did not know what type of autoimmune issue she had and as such had no way to treat it.

In the end we chose the second option, to lay her to rest and end her suffering. We were both there for her and I got to hold her as she left us as my wife held her head and whispered to her as we said our goodbyes. As my first dog it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. We both know it was the right thing to do but it hasn’t made the last 30 hours any easier. I consider myself a rather strong person and not a lot generally gets to me but I haven’t cried this much since my grandfather passed away when I was 13.

She hadn’t been herself for a couple months and by the end would spend almost the entire day laying around the house or in the yard. She used to get super excited and zoom around the house and the yard when we got home, she would regularly sprint back and forth between us in the house for scratches, she was always on the couch with us if we were watching TV and she loved to snack on bacon, bison and beef. By the end she would barely look up at us when we walked in, she could barely muster a trot let alone a run and only for a couple feet at best, she couldn’t jump up on the couch any more and if she ate anything other than her special food she would throw up within a couple minutes.

So much about her personality had changed by the end that the only two constants were her absolute love of food and her absolute hatred of foxes. She loved food more than life itself and if she even considered you had food she would be by your side as your new best friend. Even the day she left us she still sat by us while we ate lunch hoping to get a snack. It killed me to not give her any table scraps because she would always throw it back up shortly after.

The other constant was her hated of foxes, she never really saw foxes with my wife prior to our meeting but at my house one played peek a boo with her through the fence one time and it was fight on sight from then on. If she so much as smelled the fox near the yard she was barking and more than a few times was I awoken at 3am because the fox screamed outside and she had to scream back. Even Friday night, with pneumonia starting to take hold and almost no muscle left she ran for the first time in months because a fox slipped under the fence when we let her out. Even with a good head start she almost caught it then barked and pranced back to the house looking happier than I’d seen her in a long time.

Tonight the house feels quiet, I know it’s going to take a while to heal, so many things in the house remind me of her. Even her paw prints that she left in the carpet yesterday right before we left leave me choked up when I walk by the room. I know this was a very long post but writing it down makes me feel a bit better so I figured I would share it all with you.

Rest in Peace Dollie, we love you and we miss you Miss Ma’am.
View attachment 8148652
Sorry for your loss. Hang in there and remember all the good.
 
View attachment 8148649View attachment 8148650View attachment 8148651This is Dollie, she was our 5 year old rough Collie that we had to make the hard decision to lay to rest yesterday. I met her for the first time almost 3 years ago when my now wife brought her with her on our first date and she has been with us ever since even being present for our engagement last year. She had many names, a super fluffy coat that left itself everywhere, an appetite as big as a buffalo, which she loved to eat, and a personality that she loved to share but only with people she knew. She has been predominantly trouble free with zero health issue until recently but the last couple months have been hell.

It started around Christmas, one day she started favoring her one rear leg after a walk with my Fiancé so we thought she just stubbed her leg while on the trail. After a couple days the limping stopped and she could run fine but she was still slow getting up from laying down. We took her to the vet but they checked and found nothing wrong. This continued for a couple more weeks until her legs started getting puffy but another trip to the vet and a blood test showed nothing abnormal.

Then at the end of February her face swelled up so we took her to the vet and she was given some steroids to help but the side effects were bad and the swelling went away so we stopped. At this point she started becoming more lethargic, she used to get super excited to chase deer but became much more subdued on walks and wasn’t as hyper around the house. Towards the end of March we took her for another vet visit with a full blood panel that showed she was a little anemic.

After that the month of April was one of the most stressful months of my life, not only were we finishing the final planning for our wedding but her health start to rapidly rapidly decline as well. We had set up a specialist vet appointment for mid April but at the end of March she started getting sick, first once a day and then multiple times a day at all hours. I was usually up at least 2 or 3 times a night to clean it up and she always looked so sad even though we knew and told her it wasn’t her fault. We tried different foods, going to multiple smaller meals even feeding her ground bison from my hunt last year just trying to find something she would keep down. By the time her vet appointment came around she was lethargic, having trouble breathing with a fever and her head had started to hollow out.

When we went to the vet appointment we were fully expecting a cancer diagnosis, they came back with aspiration pneumonia, megaesophagus and an underlying auto immune issue. Since all of these were possibly treatable we were glad to have a better diagnosis than we had expected but in the end and actual cancer diagnosis would have been better as we wouldn’t have spent another month, thousands of dollars in tests and treatments getting our hopes up only for it to fall apart again.

We were able to treat the pneumonia but the megaesophagus left her continuing to get sick and greatly increasing the risk of reasperating. Additionally while she was recovering we couldn’t do anything to curb her auto immune issue as doing so could compromise her pneumonia recovery. During this time she continued to lose weight, dropping from 85 to 65 pounds in only a couple weeks as her immune system began to eat at her muscles.

Just prior to our wedding she had started to level off, she wasn’t getting sick as much and it seemed like the medicine was helping. We left her with my mother in law who took good care of her during the week of our honeymoon. When we got back she had lost a little more weight but had otherwise not gotten much worse while we were gone. We had a vet appointment last Thursday to confirm we were cleared to start a steroid treatment to try and fix her immune system.

It didn’t work, neither steroid helped and on top of it she began throwing up again and started to have more labored breathing. I spent the weekend at home with her to monitor her as she spent the days laying around hoping that eventually the steroids would kick in and she would start to feel like her old self. Instead she continued to hollow out more each day and by Tuesday morning her head wasn’t much more than a skull with skin on it and her legs had almost no muscle left. We didn’t realize it at first but she had reasperated Friday giving herself pneumonia again and sending her immune system into overdrive which caused the rapid decline in muscle in only 4 days. At the end she was down to 55 pounds, down 30 pounds in a little over a month and a half even with us feeding her more than her normal amount of food.

So with her breathing that much more labored we took her to the ER yesterday afternoon to get her checked. The doctor had confirmed that she did in fact have pneumonia with very low oxygen levels and we realistically had two choices left. The first option was the spent close to $10,000 leaving her in the hospital for several days so that they could get rid of the pneumonia. The next step would be surgery to put a feeding tube into her stomach so that we could feed her intravenously to hopefully avoid her getting sick. For a dog that loved food as much as she did that would have been adding insult to injury. In the end we would be $20,000+ in the hole and still not have even touched the main autoimmune issue that caused everything in the first place. They still did not know what type of autoimmune issue she had and as such had no way to treat it.

In the end we chose the second option, to lay her to rest and end her suffering. We were both there for her and I got to hold her as she left us as my wife held her head and whispered to her as we said our goodbyes. As my first dog it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. We both know it was the right thing to do but it hasn’t made the last 30 hours any easier. I consider myself a rather strong person and not a lot generally gets to me but I haven’t cried this much since my grandfather passed away when I was 13.

She hadn’t been herself for a couple months and by the end would spend almost the entire day laying around the house or in the yard. She used to get super excited and zoom around the house and the yard when we got home, she would regularly sprint back and forth between us in the house for scratches, she was always on the couch with us if we were watching TV and she loved to snack on bacon, bison and beef. By the end she would barely look up at us when we walked in, she could barely muster a trot let alone a run and only for a couple feet at best, she couldn’t jump up on the couch any more and if she ate anything other than her special food she would throw up within a couple minutes.

So much about her personality had changed by the end that the only two constants were her absolute love of food and her absolute hatred of foxes. She loved food more than life itself and if she even considered you had food she would be by your side as your new best friend. Even the day she left us she still sat by us while we ate lunch hoping to get a snack. It killed me to not give her any table scraps because she would always throw it back up shortly after.

The other constant was her hated of foxes, she never really saw foxes with my wife prior to our meeting but at my house one played peek a boo with her through the fence one time and it was fight on sight from then on. If she so much as smelled the fox near the yard she was barking and more than a few times was I awoken at 3am because the fox screamed outside and she had to scream back. Even Friday night, with pneumonia starting to take hold and almost no muscle left she ran for the first time in months because a fox slipped under the fence when we let her out. Even with a good head start she almost caught it then barked and pranced back to the house looking happier than I’d seen her in a long time.

Tonight the house feels quiet, I know it’s going to take a while to heal, so many things in the house remind me of her. Even her paw prints that she left in the carpet yesterday right before we left leave me choked up when I walk by the room. I know this was a very long post but writing it down makes me feel a bit better so I figured I would share it all with you.

Rest in Peace Dollie, we love you and we miss you Miss Ma’am.
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So sorry dude.
 
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Thank you all for the kind words. I woke up last night to the fox screaming and I could have swore I heard her bark. It’s going to take some adjusting, her being so young and watching her waste away while trying everything we could to help was the worst part. For a month we thought we could turn it around and get the old Dollie back, it wasn’t until this weekend that we realized the end was near but we thought we had at least another week to say our goodbyes until our unexpected ER visit Tuesday.

If I’d have known Monday was her last night, I’d have fed her those Bison Filets, taken her to the park to see the deer, let her chase the foxes one last time in the yard and not kept her in our bathroom for half the night in case she got sick. It’s one of my biggest regrets that I didn’t get to make her last night the best that I could because I didn’t know it was going to be her last.

In a way I owe Dollie a debt I can never truly repay, an offhand comment made that Dollie’s birthday happened to coincide with our first date and the birthday treats that I brought her was the first impression that started our relationship. My wife has told me that moment and the way that I loved Dollie through out our time together is one of the things she loves about me and has helped to strengthen our relationship over the past few years.

Dollie was there for the whole thing and we are glad that she had the strength to hold on until after our wedding and honeymoon so that we could spend a little more time with her. It would have been a significantly more somber event had she passed just prior to our wedding but she was a good girl and held on until we were able to devote our complete attention to her after our return. For that I am truly grateful and I let her know that while sitting and petting her in the yard for several hours over the weekend.

The one thing I think that will help is that we are scheduled to pick up a field bred golden retriever puppy next Friday. When she was diagnosed with the auto immune issue we assumed that her life would be shortened a bit from the expected 12 to 14 years. Since we are planning to have kids in the future and didn’t want to raise both a hunting puppy and a toddler we decided to look into getting a puppy to raise now prior to having kids.

When we signed the paperwork for the puppy in April we were expecting Dollie to live at least another few years with treatments. We were also hoping that having a puppy around would give her a bit of excitement as she seemed to love my mother in laws puppy and they would play together quite a bit when she was over. I never thought that she wouldn’t make it to meet the puppy.

Even though it’s hard we know she is in a better place now, free from the suffering that she was experiencing. She is now back to her old fluffy hyper self, running free with the three other dogs that she grew up with who had all since passed in the last couple years.

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Sorry for your loss!
We put ours down three years ago, a month or two later my wife went and rescued another from the pound.
We believe in giving, good home, good life and love to a dog that may not have had a chance.
I lived with guilt for over a year, because I made the final decision, still think about it and I'm sure I'll have to do it again.
I guess that is why we all should cherish and enjoy our time on this earth.
Good luck, be strong. (y)
 
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