Our Horrible Halloween

This year's Halloween is one that I never want to relive.

The night before Halloween, mom was in town and we had been  down to Lafayette to go shopping and when we arrived home we found Truck (our yellow lab puppy) with large swollen spot on the left side of his face under his ear. So I called our vet at home and told her what was going on and she said to give him and aspirin and as long as he continued to breathe okay we could bring him in first thing in the morning Halloween day, Wednesday.

 Dan took him in Wednesday morning and the vet said that he had all of the signs of puppy strangles, a rare puppy autoimmune disease, or he had some sort of an abscess that had become severely infected. She wanted to keep him for 24 hours and observe him and give him antibiotics. I called at 2pm that day and he was still doing the same and still hadn't eaten anything.

Dan was on second shift that night and had left for work. So at 4:00pm, I started getting the boys ready in their costumes and we snapped some pictures on the porch before we left.

 

 

Our first stop was "Aunt" Cathy's house at around 4:45 and as I was walking the boys into her house my phone rang. It was the vet and she had horrible news, she said she had just gone back to check on Truck and there was blood coming from his mouth and nose. She said I could come get him and take him home and probably wouldn't make it or transport him to Purdue Emergency Vet Clinic where he could be in the ICU.

So much for trick or treating, I went to get Truck, took him to Lafayette and my dad met me there with dinner for the boys.

I got Truck admitted and they wanted to sedate him and do a complete oral exam and see if they could figure out what was going on. The vet said it might take a bit so I loaded the boys back up and tried to squeeze in a few trick or treat stops for the boys so their Halloween wasn't completely ruined.

We got to my Grandpa's in West Lafayette and the vet called and said that I had some decisions to make. He could continue with a full surgery and something needed to be done quickly because Truck wasn't breathing well and we would be looking at spending around $3000 just for the surgery and it may not be something they could fix or treat so we might still loose Truck or our other option was euthanasia. I called Dan and we chose the second choice.

My Dad went to the clinic and took care of the details, the boys and I went to my Aunt and Uncle's. Dad followed us home and brought Truck home to be buried.

It was absolutely horrible and the thing that made it more awful was that had an appointment the following day to have Dakota euthanized asher cancer had progressed and she was in a lot of pain and not walking unless she had help.

I was at peace with what needed to be done for her and I didn't think it was humane to allow her to continue living the in the condition she was in.

Loosing two fury family members within 24 hours was unfathomable. Thank God for my Dad and all of his help and Dan for comforting me while I was on an emotional roller coaster.

 

 

This picture was was probably taken a couple months ago, but was a great one with both of them.