And then the dog died. It's the worst part of any story about dogs but it's part of the deal. Dogs don't live forever although the best ones should.
That dreaded day recently arrived for us and we had to let our beloved Ranger go. He was 12.5 years old which for a dog his size is the human equivalent of being over 90. He had a good long life filled with adventures, a job he loved, a family that adored him, and all the attention he could soak up. Of course from our perspective it still wasn't long enough.
When he was about 11 we noticed he was getting stiff in the back end and preferred not to sit. That's when he began seeing his orthopedic vet. She was giving him cold laser treatments and massage for arthritis and the consequent hip dysplasia every few weeks which made him feel a lot better. He was willing to sit and to walk up household stairs again.
About seven months after his first visit his vet noticed lumps on each hip. The one on the left was smaller by a little bit but both were easily felt. Diagnosing a couple of fatty tumors which are very common in older dogs she started him on some Chinese herbs and things continued as normal. In a few weeks the lump on the left had vanished and the one on the right had grown significantly. That's when we got his regular vet involved. Needle aspiration was inconclusive, X-rays were inconclusive, biopsy said cancer and surgery was scheduled. After surgical removal of the large lump the pathology report came back with the proverbial good news/bad news. The bad news is that it was an aggressive sarcoma that would almost certain to recur. The good news was it would be very slow to metastasize.
One nice side benefit to the cancer surgery was the set of x-rays. The regular vet is great and whenever x-rays are necessary he does his best to get an excellent image of the area in question but also as much additional area as possible. This meant that the ortho vet finally had clear pictures for diagnosing Ranger's structural issues. Ranger's spine was in much better shape than we'd assumed although the hip arthritis and dysplasia was clearly present. The interesting discovery was that he had a lot of arthritis in his chest. That allowed us to change his treatment which was nice for our budget. The other thing the surgery and x-rays revealed was just how hard sedation was on Ranger. Even the light sedation for the x-ray took more than 24 hours to clear his system.
Following the pathology report the regular vet referred Ranger to the nearest canine oncologist--about an hour away. After a brief exam and time spent with the pathology report the canine oncologist told us that the cancer would almost certainly return. Chemotherapy would be useless against his particular form of cancer and our only option was radiation treatment. This would be nearly four hours round trip five days a week for six weeks. And he would need to be sedated for every treatment.
Knowing that we had a 12 year old dog that did not react well to sedation we chose quality of life over quantity. I simply couldn't imagine putting Ranger, who always loved car rides, into the car to take him to something he would hate every weekday for six weeks in hopes that we might have him longer. And when you factored in that even light sedation took a long time to clear his system it didn't seem reasonable or safe to sedate him five days a week for a month and an half.
After his recovery from surgery Ranger resumed his regular activities and then he developed a skin infection. That ended up being treated by a short hair cut and some antibiotics. Finally everything got back to normal and Ranger's coat started coming back in. But just as we were settling into that normal the sarcoma came back. We added frankincense oil and more herbs to fight the cancer but you could see it continuing to grow. Soon the tumor located on his right hip was throwing off his balance and making it hard for him to get up and down. We added a help 'em up harness to assist with his mobility and settled into this normal.
The tumor continued to grow steadily and we added more pain meds, we tried CBD oil, we added CBD oil with THC and we increased the dosages but it finally reached the point where the tumor was huge and was pressing on his spine and the pain meds couldn't keep up. His mobility had decreased significantly and his quality of life was poor. It was time to let him go.
His ortho vet offered that service and since he liked going there because she made him feel better we chose to take him there. Then we brought him home and buried him in the yard in one of his favorite places.
