About six weeks ago, I offered this post regarding a deathwatch for one of our dogs, Thor. After coming down with a mysterious aliment in July that left him totally incapacitated, he begin to rebound after he was placed on a heavy dose of steroids to try to get his low red blood cell count back to where it needed to be. He was soon eating voraciously, and he gained 15 pounds in 4 weeks. We took him into the vet weekly for blood tests and, until two weeks ago, the red blood cell numbers kept improving. Then, the improvements stopped and, soon, things started getting worse again.
The vet ultimately concluded that Thor most likely had cancer somewhere and, given his age, there was little we could do that would make any sense.
Starting Thursday, Thor needed help to get up and, given his 115 pounds, that was no easy task. Yesterday, he started refusing food (including a ribeye steak that we cooked just for him) and we then knew that the end was near but, because he did not seem to be in pain, we decided to let nature take its course. Despite his condition, last night he made the effort to let himself outside to join us while we had company. He was a people-dependent dog, and one tough SOB (literally), to the end.
Sensing that he would not make it through the night, we decided to all sleep in the living room with him. We found him dead at 4:30 a.m. this morning.
Tonight at dinner, we will have toast in his honor. We will all miss him.
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