What Happened

Many of you have asked what exactly happened with Axl. I'll do my best to explain.

If we want to start from the beginning, it goes clear back to October or November. He started throwing up every night during the night. At first we thought maybe he was getting overheated (our bedroom gets pretty hot at night), so we started sleeping with our door open. That didn't help matters. He also was losing fur in patches on his hind legs.

This went on for a couple months until just after Christmas, when we used our Christmas money to take him to the vet. He weighed 90 lbs on Dec. 30, which was about 10 lbs less than normal. But his normal 100 lbs was overweight, so this weight loss was actually a good thing. They ran blood and fecal tests but couldn't find anything. They sent us home with an antibiotic and a cortisone pill, thinking maybe those would fix whatever it was.

It seemed to for awhile.

The throwing up lessened and he seemed mostly back to his goofy self.

Then he started getting the shakes a lot. He'd just be laying somewhere and his whole body would be shaking. We thought maybe he was just cold since it was winter, so we'd cover him up with blankets, and sometimes that'd take care of it.

Well, last week, he stopped eating. Adam took him on a field trip to the pet store to get a different kind of food. He ate it maybe once or twice, but then started refusing that too. I started feeding him treats during the day so he'd at least have something in his stomach, but he started refusing those also. When we tried canned dog food, he just licked it but wouldn't eat any. When we tried lunchmeat, he'd catch it when we dropped it for him, but then he'd set it on the ground and guard it from Diesel, but not eat it.

He'd also gotten really skinny.

We decided that it was time to go back to the vet and do further testing. But since this would mean more money, we had to shop around to find a vet that did a payment plan/credit system of sorts since ours didn't. We ended up finding a really amazing vet, who I'll talk more about in another post.

Adam took him in on Tuesday afternoon while I was at work. When they weighed him, he was down to 75 lbs. They did some preliminary exams, said he seemed very sick, and decided to keep him overnight to do more tests.

Our first night without Axl was hard, I didn't realize it til he was gone, but he really played a small part in pretty much everything I do around the house. We still had hope though, that it might be an easy fix.

Wednesday morning, I called the vet around 11am to see if they'd figured anything out. They said they still wanted to do more tests and didn't have anything to tell me.

I got a call from the vet around 2pm, and it wasn't good.

I'll try to explain.

First, they said that he was pretty anemic, his gums and tongue were very pale. His red blood count was very low, and (I may be wrong on this, but I think this is what he said) his bone marrow should've been responding to that, trying to fix it, but it wasn't.

They also found a mass, possibly a tumor, in his abdomen.

They couldn't tell from the x-ray exactly where the mass was (stomach, kidneys, liver, etc.) or what it was.

Our options were taking a sample of bone marrow to test what was going on with that, or doing an exploratory surgery to get a piece of the mass to test.

Both of which were going to be very expensive procedures.
Both of which were going to have to be done at the vet hospital up at K-State in Manhattan.
Both of which may or may not have told us there would be nothing else to do but keep him comfortable the rest of his short life.

The combination of all the things that were wrong with him pointed to leukemia, though they couldn't be sure.

Adam and I had made a decision years ago that we wouldn't go into debt for our pets. If and when the time came, we pre-decided that for the greater good of our family, we wouldn't prolong their lives if it was going to be costly, and more importantly, if it wasn't best for them. We didn't want to be selfish.

So, Adam and I had to make the gut-wrenching decision to put Axl to sleep.

I've never had to make that decision before, and I was (and still am) a mess. Adam and I went to see Axl one last time (which I'll blog about later on because it was such a wonderful time for the three of us), and after seeing him, I know we made the right decision. He didn't feel good at all. He was hurting.

I have a couple more posts in the works about Axl, so bear with me through this grieving process. I appreciate so much the comments, facebook posts, texts, and emails you all have sent. It helps to know that people realize that Axl wasn't just a dog to us. He was part of our family. I'm sure over the course of reading my blog, you all have found that we didn't exactly treat our dogs as normal dogs. They sleep in our bed, lick our baby's face clean, and just bring so much joy to our life.

Thanks to Sage for taking care of Sutton while I took one of the hardest phone calls of my life. Thanks to Ginger for caring enough to offer as much as you did, for crying with me. Thanks to Mark and Barb for offering to pay all of Axl's medical bills...that was more than generous, you didn't have to do that, but I know the dog-people you are and that you went through this very thing not too long ago. Thanks isn't enough.

Thanks to my parents, for their prayers, money, and support. They loved this dog too. Thanks to Adam's parents for their support and to Ed for watching Sutton while we went to say goodbye.

Axl was one-of-a-kind, and I still can't believe he's gone. He was so loved, and we will cherish the memory of his craziness forever.