I knew my dog was getting old (he’s 12 ½) and I knew that this winter when I stayed with him it was likely going to be one of the; if not the last time. He’s been limping a lot – so mom had his foot looked at, they had noticed a big cut, and got it all cleaned up. They did x-rays to be on the safe side, and as I was boarding the plane in Des Moines on Thursday, mom called that the vet told her it was bone cancer.
They said they could do surgery and amputate part of his foot / leg, recovery would take 2-4 weeks. Or we could make the decision to put him down. He’s 12 ½; bouncing back from anesthesia is not going to be easy for him. We weighed the options and decided to put him down. What if we did the surgery and he came out of it just fine, but they were honest with us in that we didn’t know if it had spread – and if it has, how much. That there would be a possibility of having to put him down not long after the surgery due to his health declining.
It was a tough decision to make, I don’t want him to be hurting, but I also don’t want to lose my dog.
You see, I fought for him. Mom and I were looking for a dog – and we wanted him to be hypoallergenic because even though my allergy to dogs isn’t bad, we just knew we needed to be smart. We fell in love with Bichon Frise. We found an ad in the paper for somewhere near Anamosa, and called. He was only 5 months old, this was April 2005. I’m guessing they got him at a puppy store, and then decided they didn’t want him. I got him for $100 or something crazy cheap like that. He ran circles around the room and I decided to name him Turbo. Okay… I might have had the name picked out before I even got there; but his crazy, wild running solidified the name.
We found out later he was born 11/11; you see, my Mom and I have a thing for 11:11 on the clock, so it was very fitting. We had just bought the old Maid Rite, and were in the process of renovating. He became THE dog of JB’s.
He’s much more to me than that, though. He scratched at my door when I had seizures in the middle of the night; he never left my side when I came home from the hospital of the two seizures I had. And he wasn’t even trained; but he was smart.
Last night after work I went home to see him; I took a ton of pictures and cried a lot. It was hard. It was really hard to leave, knowing the next time I go back to my parents place, he won’t be there. *Edited this; we decided to wait it out a bit after he was on doggy morphine for a week; and he did perk up a bit, but June 9th, we will say goodbye to our Turbo. Since he perked up some, he’s suddenly been declining.
It was really hard. He’s been with me through a lot. He scratched at my door when I had a seizure in my sleep, he perched by my side after both other seizures. The one where I was driving, and had to stay in the hospital – he was pretty much attached to me for a few days when I got home. He was never a trained seizure alert dog, but he just knew.
There is no denying this guy had some spunk and character. It’ll leave a big spot in my heart on Friday when we take him in, but I know that he was so very loved, and spoiled.
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