Thursdays Thoughts

Today I am rather blah! Still, I've been having a bad week... actually it's been a bad month. July has never been the best month for me and that is still ringing true for 2011. Today I learned that a friend of mine has a sick dog. Her dog has thyroid Cancer and the vet hasn't given him much time to live. Hearing this brings back memories, memories of my Pudge whom I lost last year in March. I had raised Pudge, I watched him be born. He was so fat when he was born he looked like a sausage with 4 legs, so I called him Pudge. At 3 days old he knew his name already, so the name stuck. When Pudge was 3 I had lost his Mother. She had been diagnosed with Lymphocycoma Cancer. I learned a hard lesson, not to open up a dog that is sick. We had opted for a biopsy of her one lymph node and by opening her up it made her go faster. The night she died she still had the staples in her leg from doing the biopsy. She literally was catatonic and I had decided that it was time. She couldn't walk or move, this was a 70lb dog that now had to be carried out to the car. As I came back into the house to get her she got up, she actually got up and she walked out of the back door onto the porch and just looked around. Then she walked down the two stairs and gently got into the backseat of the car. This was a dog that couldn't walk or move all day long, the cancer had gotten into her spinal cord she was now almost paralyzed. But she got up and walked out the door and into the car.  Just as I had turned around to go back into the house and get my purse I heard a big deep breath... and then she was gone. Just like that in a split second she was gone.


This tore me for weeks not having her in the house. Then Pudge, Pudge was only 3 and we had taken his Mom outside and never brought her back. He wouldn't look at me or even come near me for days and days. It was almost like my own dog had blamed me for taking his Mom away. Cori was only 5 when this happened.  Through all the years after losing Cori I often wondered if Pudge too would suffer the same fate and end up with Cancer. Years had gone by and gone by and he still acted like a puppy.  One Sunday afternoon while he was outside with Lucy he fell over, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, my god I thought he was gone.. he was around 11 at the time this happened. Then he slowly began to wake up.. but in the meantime we had rushed him to the emergency vet. They wanted to put him to sleep right then and there.. NO! I was not doing that, we took him home and opted to have our regular vet look at him the very next day.  They did an ultrasound and found that a majority of his internal organs were covered in tumors and gave him three months tops to live. This was not happening...

To get to the moral of the story... Pudge was loved, he was really loved and spoiled and coddled. Those three months came and went over and over again. A dog's will to live depends on how much they are loved. If they feel loved they want to live. Pudge wanted to live he fought and fought to live. Sure he had his good days and bad days and some scary days in between, but he kept on going and going for 18 months after the backyard episode.  The vet had told us that when he does go he would probably just go in his sleep and not wake up.  This to me was a calming thought.. but that is not what happened. One Tuesday afternoon one second he was standing the next second he had hit the floor like a rock. That was it.. this was the day I had been asking God Please not today, today was that day I had not asked for it not to be that day.  By the time we got him into the car, to the vet, and onto the table he was pretty much already gone. The tumors had burst while he was awake and standing up and that is what caused him to fall over and within the 45 mins it took to go from living room to vet room he was already gone.

But this isn't about losing my Pudge, I knew that day would come, this is about the will to live. People need to have the same will and fight to live as dogs who want to live. This is a dog that taught me to fight, to fight for everything. You can do it and even if you are terminally ill you can still live and enjoy yourself. We all have the need to feel loved.. the more we are loved the more we have a will to live... tell those you love that you do! You may never know when life may get cut short... appreciate the air you breath, the sites you see, the things you hear. Love thy animals... always love your animals, for they depend on you in their time of need, they depend on you for their life...

Below I'd like to share with you a poem that someone gave me many years ago when I lost Cori, it is by an unknown author, but it says it best... how a dog's love is unconditional! I can attest to that, my dog Zero loves and adores me so much that I would be blessed if people loved me even half as much as my dogs do! If only people could learn lessons from animals about love and adoration what a happier world this would be....