Guiness Cheats The Grim Reaper: The Luck of One Cairn Terrier

[Obamarama]

I love my dog, but if I weren't so happy right now I'd strangle her out of frustration for emotional torutre! :-) I know this is probably a boringly long ubiquitous pet post, but dog-lovers and pet lovers in general will be able to relate. Just need to share this with people who understand.

My cairn terrier, Guiness (see obligiatory pic below), was diagnosed last month with lymphoma. She's 15 going on 16, the vet said the lymphoma was already pretty advanced, so we decided to forego any heroic treatment protocols to save her life. We put her on prednisone once a day as the vet said this can sometimes slow the progression.

My partner and I agreed that we would take her in to be euthanized as soon as her quality of life was diminished. We love her to death, but will not keep her alive to satisfy our own emotional needs. The vet said eventually she would start vomiting and quit eating. We decided that would be the point at which we'd take her in.

So Thursday morning, she ate about 1/4 of her food. She's a chow hound, so our hearts sank. She ate a few bites in the evening and then threw it up. Our hearts sank a little further. I gave her a few treats before bed, and she immediately threw them up.

Friday morning, she didn't even touch her food. Let her outside to go to the bathroom and she ate a bunch of grass, and puked it up. She then went to her bowl, ate about half the bowl and within an hour yakked that up too. So, early Friday afternoon I make the call to the vet to let him know we were going to enjoy one last day with Guiness and bring her in this morning and let her go.

The parnter and I go into emotional meltdown (despite knowing this is inevitable and intelectually knowing this is the right thing to do). Late yesterday afternoon I was working in the kitchen, marinating some chicken breasts for the grill. It's near where we keep the dog treats, and all of a sudden there's this little blonde dog sitting on her hind paws begging for a treat.

I reluctantly gave her one, and thought what can it hurt. She kept it down and after about an hour I gave her another. After she kept that down, I gave her a very small amount of food. She kept that down. A couple hours later, we gave her some more. She kept that down.

This morning, I got up at 5 a.m. to see if she kept everything down. She did, and there she was sitting by the back door, tail wagging, waiting to go out. She bounded back up the deck, into the back door and over to her bowl, sat there and looked at me like "C'mon...you know the drill. Food. NOW!"

I fed her the regular full amount she gets in the AM and after she kept that down, she went and grabbed her nyla-bone and came and dropped it at my feet for a game of fetch. At 8 a.m. I called the vet and told him the good news.

She's laying here next to me on the bed as I post this looking up at me with these big, brown eyes as if to say "You can't get rid of me THAT easily." I know that this is only temporary and soon we WILL have to take her in and do the unthinkable.

But today....today is a gift.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a22/ericm10366/CT1.bmp

[givemebackmycountry]

1. What a cutie...

Dogs in snow rule.
It always makes me laugh when I see a dog covered in snow after frolicking around outside.

Lovely story.

And as a Irish guy, I love Guiness!

Emma...another snow dog. My sisters Golden.

[Obamarama]

2. What a beautiful dog. Golden Retriever's rock.....

That's what we'd have if we didn't have a cairn terrier. We just don't have a large enough of an outdoor space to have one. Those are dogs that need huge expanses of outdoors to run around.