Goodbye Woobers...

Here's the post I mentioned in the previous post today about The Old Man passing. I'm not going to alter it. It pretty much sums up what happened. The whole thing happened so suddenly after having the dental surgery. We thought we would have longer with him. Sometimes I still think I can hear him barking to come inside, out in the yard. We miss having a dog sometimes, although I'm more partial to cats. :D

08/27/2010 A month or so ago, a friend posted a status update about how her friends' pre-baby dogs' health were starting to decline. At the Old Man's last vet visit, I was so relieved that he was not having any of the geriatric complications that I would have checked off of an assessment sheet for the vet. I knew he was old. It was his ten year appointment, but, at the time, he just seemed so healthy for his age. A while back, a bump appeared on his right mandible (that's his top jaw for you non-medical field folks. ;) We thought it may be due to an abcessed tooth. We took him in. They performed surgery to extract the possible suspects. The bump went down a bit. Then it started to grow out of control. The vet pulled fluid off and said it didn't look like the fluid that is in either cysts or tumors. We let it go. We did what we could to make him comfortable. The tumor grew and grew. He was still able to eat and happy to see us. He wasn't quite as able to keep up the way he used to. The tumor grew so big it pushed his eye shut and was protruding from his mouth. This last week, the tumor had developed lesions. Those lesions started to bleed. By Wednesday night/Thursday evening, he was bleeding...so...so...much. I stayed up with him much of the night. Then Dirty took over. We'd hoped to take him to Laumeier one more time. We'd hoped to get pictures with him one...more...time...He was bleeding too much. He was weak. We couldn't keep him any longer. We didn't want him to be miserable. Dirty took him Thursday on that final car ride. I had to go to class. I failed my first real nursing school test. Thank goodness they'll let me retake it. Now we're miserable. I go from composure to complete and udder tears. I was feeling better today. Then I came home and unlocked the door. I was waiting to hear him come to the top of the stairs and start sniffing to see where I'd been and who I'd seen. That didn't happen. I miss him. We all miss him. Goodbye Woobers. I know your spirit's somewhere out there in the Universe. I hope there is reincarnation and you can come into someone else's life who will be an even better pack leader to you and take you on more walks and not care if you lay on their couch.