On Monday morning, I heard Buster scrambling around on the laminate floors. He has trouble getting his footing on them sometimes, so I helped him to his bed. Usually this is a fleeting problem, but it persisted into the afternoon, so I called the vet’s office to make an appointment. They were not able to fit us in until Tuesday morning, but I didn’t think that it was an emergency at that point so I was agreeable.
As the evening wore on, he kept getting worse. He could still walk a little, but pretty much kept to his bed, only getting up once or twice to get a drink or go outside. Outside, after he went, he would lay down in the snow. That’s when I started getting worried. We had to carry him in multiple times which was no easy task.
His breathing was also a bit labored and late that evening, his stomach looked distended. While totally fine at breakfast, he wouldn’t take any food the rest of the day. He spent the day and night in the living room so I “slept” (I didn’t get much sleep) on the couch that night. Tuesday morning rolled around and he was not looking better so I had a pretty good idea how our vet trip was going to go. Jake got him loaded into the car and I took him to his appointment.
The vet didn’t have to look him over for long before we got a diagnosis–Buster had multiple masses in his abdominal area and given his symptoms, one of them likely started bleeding. There wasn’t anything they could do but put him to sleep. Apparently this is a common thing that happens with dogs, but it’s my first experience with it.
At his age (13), you can kind of figure something like this could happen at any time, but it was still a bit of a shock–especially how fast things went down.
Buster was quite the character and his antics are well documented in this blog. He was totally into routines and would always remind me to fill his Kong bone with Bil-Jac after every meal. He never did master riding in a car and you could always count on him to get carsick. We took him on a couple of trips and he did not enjoy it at all because he wasn’t home. He was the barkiest dog to ever live (the house is so quiet without him). And, he liked cats and cats liked him.
Buster wasn’t always easy but he was the best boy he could be.