Happy birthday bud...

And the funny thing to me
is how quickly it slips away
and leaves ya longin' for the things
that were never spoken

I usually don't post lyrics to songs. But one of the reasons that I like Mason Jennings is that his songs often capture my mood almost perfectly. And I was listening to Big Sur (Mason Jennings) this morning on my way into work. And it made me think of the last week or so.

I kind of alluded to this with a few posts over the past week, but about Thursday or Friday of last week our male dog stopped eating and had problems with his back end. He would whine going up and down stairs and nothing was passing through. We watched it over the weekend and nothing got better. So Monday I took off of work and took him to the vet. They took some blood and urine and ran some tests, but everything came back fine. So they put him on anti-inflammatory pills.

Tuesday was better. He ate a little canned food and drank some water, and seemed to be moving around better, so we thought the pills were working. We thought...

Yesterday we woke up and discovered he couldn't move his back legs at all. He tried to get up, but there was nothing he could do. Now I was freaking out. For one, he's not a small dog. Before he stopped eating for a week, he was in the 150-160lb range. Monday he was 128lbs, but still a large dog. You couldn't pick him up yourself, that's for sure. The fact that he couldn't help by standing, did not make things any better.

So we call the vet. He refers us to a 24 hour clinic an hour north of us. So we load him up on the comforter from our bed, carry him out to the truck, and I drive him up to the clinic. They take him in on a stretcher basically and I wait for a couple of hours to see what is wrong.

After sitting in a tiny room pulling my hair out, the vet came in. They had it narrowed down to three bad possibilities. Ruptured disc, tumor or stroke. If it's a tumor or stroke, there's nothing we can do. If it's a ruptured disc, he could have surgery to the tune of about $6,000... but if he does ever get use of his back legs back (about a 50/50 chance), it could take weeks to recover. Ugh.

I must have sat there staring at the wall forever... thinking all of this over in my head. What the hell was I going to do? For one, I don't really have 6,000 anythings. I hate for money to be an issue, but jesus. And then it might not even do any good? And how the hell would I carry a 130lb dog outside to piss for weeks while he recovers?

Fuck. At least I know with our other dog, she has a bone tumor. It's just a matter of when she isn't comfortable any more, which probably won't be more than a month or two. But I have some time to evaluate that. Now I'm sitting there and I have to make a decision. My dog is laying on the floor in the other room and he can't even stand up....

So, I assumed the role of god, which fucking sucks. Who the fuck wants to decide life or death? But with no good option for recovery from whatever the hell took his ability to walk and stand away... I made a horrible fucking sucky decision. And one day before his 8th birthday, Natron went to a better place. A place where all his legs work. A place where he gets all the food he can eat. A place where he can chase squirrels until his heart is content.

We miss you bud.



Natron von der Anderung * May 10, 1999 - May 9, 2007