This week I had to make one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. I had to say good bye to"my baby", Bailey. He was my 1st dog after moving out of my parents' house for college. I got him at the animal shelter there. He was a stray but the vet said he was about 8 months old when I got him. He would've been 16 this September.
Bailey was such a good dog. I have so many good and funny memories of him. From the 1st night I had him, Bailey slept with me every night unless I was out of town and he wasn't with me. He LOVED laying under the covers and even liked using the pillow.
He was already housebroken when I got him, but he did like to chew things up for about the 1st year I had him. This is the couch he chewed up. I remember coming home one night to find about 3 of those back throw pillows emptied. Bailey had somehow unzipped them without tearing any of the pillow, but he had pulled out and shreaded all of the stuffing in them. This was Leandra, my roommate's couch. Oops! Being the super quick thinker I was in college, I thought if I just stuffed all of the stuffing back into the pillows before Leandra got home, she would never know the difference. It didn't matter that the pillows were smooth before Bailey got to them and now they were all bumpy. I thought I was so smart and Leandra never knew until years later when we were talking and she told me she knew all along. What a great roommate. Never got mad or said a word about it. :)
Bailey was very active as a puppy and even played pretty hard until just a couple of years ago. He always loved jumping up and grabbing his chew toys. You could hold a toy up as high as you could reach and he could get it. About 6 years ago, I guess he was trying to get a squirrel in the back yard. He jumped up and grabbed onto the top of our 6 foot fence. Bad part was that it was picketted at the top and when he came down he crushed his front paw. After $2500 and 2 metal plated put into his paw, he was back to normal in just 4 months!
He was a super fast runner. He always had to be on a leash because if he wasn't, he would surely run from you and he was impossible to catch. The only way I was every able to catch him was by getting in my car and letting him jump in. He loved riding in the car.
Here he is with Leandra and Rob. Thank you Leandra for letting me get a dog while I was living with you.
Last March we noticed a lump on Bailey's leg. The vet wasn't concerned yet because it was still soft and you could move it around. In June that lump got hard as a rock, literally overnight. From that point on, it started growing very quickly. In July we found out that it was cancerous... a mast cell tumor, common in boxers (he was a boxer mix). We were going to amputate his leg, but his bloodwork looked like it had already begun to spread throughout his body so it would be pointless to amputate. Our vet said he probably had anywhere between a couple of weeks to a couple of months left to live.
We started him on several medicines, one was prednisone. The prednisone seemed to work at first. His tumor got smaller. He became more active again and seemed to be feeling much better. But after about 7 or 8 months of taking all those medicines, the prednisone stopped working. I guess it was slowing down the growth of the tumor but the tumor was still growing rapidly. It went from about lemon size to bigger than his head within 2 months.
We kept giving him his pain medicine but decided to quit the prednisone since his tumor was still growing so quickly with it. Within 3 days, the bottom of his leg had swollen and he wasn't using that leg anymore. Two Sundays ago, he bumped his leg on our patio and the tumor popped open. We bandaged him up, took him to the vet on Tuesday, and he asked if we had thought about putting him down. I was totally against the thought of that. I just couldn't make that decision, but within the next week the tumor just opened more and more. I had to carry him outside to go to the bathroom and had to rewrap his bandages every day. His open wound smelled really bad so I gave him a bath this last Sunday and when I redressed his wound I couldn't believe how bad it had gotten. It was aweful! I knew then, he HAD to be in pain and the best thing I could do for him was to have him put down. Just one more confirmation of my decision, I was woken up at 5:00 Monday morning to hear him barking, yelping, and crying. I ran downstairs to see what had happened and he had fallen on his bad leg and couldn't get up. He was obviously hurting being on that leg and I knew then that there was no way I could back out of this and let him suffer anymore. No amount of pain medicine could've made him comfortable.
What do you tell a 2 1/2 year old? We told her Bailey was going to the vet for his booboo and then he was going to live with God in Heaven. Katie decided he was going to go to sleep at the vet so I agreed with her on that. We let her say good bye and give him kisses.
Kisses from Mommy
And then Katie gave him several doggie bones.
Thank you to my wonderful husband for taking him to the vet for me. There's no way I could've done that. I can't let mysef think about him actually being put down. I just have to remember how bad his leg looked Sunday night and how bad he was crying when he woke me up Monday morning. As long as I think of those things, I'm at peace with my decision to put him down. I will miss that dog so much.
Katie with Bailey (Sept 1995-April 16, 2011)
