The end of 2011 didn't turn out to be quite what we had expected...
Logan hadn't been feeling well for a couple of weeks – we thought he had a virus, so we switched to a bland diet and took it easy for a few days. He seemed to recover, so we thought all was good and that he had just gotten into something that he shouldn't have gotten into, or he had a virus and it was running its course through his system.
On Thursday evening though, he started acting oddly again, so Jared took him to our vet on 12/23, and she checked him out. She thought that he was probably fine, but took blood to be sure (her diagnosis without seeing the blood work results was just a virus). Well that evening his blood work results came back and they weren't good on many different levels, so that night we rushed to the ER vet for further diagnosis (our vet thought he might be crashing that night). The ER took some x-rays and found some weirdness in his abdomen that they couldn't explain. They needed to do an ultrasound, but that doctor wouldn't be available until 12/24.
We opted to take Logan home that night and then we brought him back at 6am on 12/24 (he was acting fine and looked more annoyed that we were dragging him all around town). When the doctor came in, she did the ultrasound and found at least 3 large masses in his abdomen. The diagnosis was that he had cancer. They asked us if we wanted to put him down and we said definitely no (as we said, he had been acting okay, eating okay, and even playing with Indy).
He had a magnificent Christmas – tons of ENERGY and more “play” in him than we have seen in quite some time. We also enjoyed a great day with him on the day after (12/26). However, things started going downhill that night though, and on Tuesday he was more lethargic and had less energy. He still managed to go on out into the backyard to explore and sniff around the trees. Wednesday came and he was about the same that morning, and even managed to make a short walk down the trail out back, but then started to tumble downwards through the afternoon and evening. By that night Logan could barely walk and he was breathing hard while simply trying to rest. We sat with him for a while and wondered what he wanted us to do. It is such a horrible situation, hold the life of such a beautiful animal in your hands. We felt that he was no longer the Logan that made him happy with barely being able to stand and losing all of his appetite. He also seemed to be uncomfortable. So on December 28, at around 11:30pm, we took Logan to the Emergency Vet and he took his final nap.
Logan gave us a lot over the years. He taught us patience, gave us joy and unconditional love, and only a single instance of sorrow. We will miss him greatly.
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| Happy Logan on Christmas Day |
