Goodbye My Friend

I just wanted to let you all know that this morning our 13 yr old dog Dakota passed on. If you read the previous post you know that she was not doing well the last couple of days. All this started on Tuesday when our vet came for her yearly physical and to do her blood work. When she got the results back on Wednesday morning her blood count was really bad. The vet thought it was a bleeding liver tumor. Unfortunately she was at the airport on her way to Brazil to buy a horse when she called me so she had us go in to the clinic for an x-ray right away. The x-ray did not show anything so we got talked into doing a $300.00 ultrasound by one of the other vets which supposedly showed the problem was with her spleen and they made the diagnosis of autoiummune hemolytic anemia. I thought for sure we were going to hear it was a cancerous bleeding liver tumor and it was over but since it was AHA they said we could treat it with prednizone. There was a problem doing that though because she has been on antinflamatories for her legs so we had to wait 2 days to start it to try and prevent her stomach from bleeding so I wasn't able to start it until yesterday morning. When we got her home Wednesday she was doing okay. Thursday morning she started having shortness of breath but came out of it and was still eating. Yesterday she refused her dog food but I got her to eat some people food and was able to start her on the pred. She was not doing well though. She seemed to rally some by last night and was doing better, she even ate some of her favorite pizza crusts but this morning I heard her fall about 4:30. I went down to check on her and she seemed okay so I went back to sleep. When Rich got up this morning he tried to give her another pill but she refused it so he had to force her to take it. By the time I got up she was barely moving and we saw blood on the ground so I called the vet techs our vet told us to call if something happened and they came and put her down. She was really bad by the time they got here and they think she was bleeding out. We kept telling Dakota it was okay to go before they go here but she didn't. That was the hardest part waiting for them to come but thankfully she died very peacefully on a beautiful spring day under our cherry tree after they started the process. Needless to say the last couple of days have been very stressful and sad for us but at least I know she had a good life and hopefully she did not suffer. She was a wonderful loyal dog who loved to catch balls and frisbees. We will miss her a lot but I know she had a good life and we have a lot of great memories of her. I just hope that she is in a peaceful place now doing all the things she loved and one day a long time from now we will see her again.