Yet again

Here I sit, my heart breaking, tears well up and stream down my face.  We had to have Angel put to sleep tonight.  He was a dear, sweet dog, that barked way too much and startled too easily.  But he was a good dog that deserved to live long enough to be old and cranky.

He was fine on Thursday evening when we left for Hemet to celebrate New Year's Eve with some friends.  Sometime between then and when we got home in the morning, he lacerated his tongue and tore up the edges of his ears.  In the next two days he steadily if slowly went downhill, his ears would keep oozing blood, then he wouldn't eat, then he even refused to drink any water.  He was lethargic when I went to work, but Les was home for the day and would take Angel to the vet to see what was up.

When Les took him in this morning Angel had begun to drool blood.  They were going to treat the symptoms first then try to figure out what was going on.  The blood tests showed he had no white blood cells to speak of and his platelets were all screwed up.  There was no saving Angel, just releasing him from his suffering.  

When we got to the vets and they brought him in, earlier they had shaved his ears and noticed the bruising and continued to shave Angel to see if they could figure out the problem.  They surmised he had vascular problems due to the blood issues that resulted in him bruising down all of his neck and partly onto his shoulder.  The assistant stopped shaving him at that point, she told us.

It might have been cancer, but they just don't know.  All I know is Angel was a good dog, a sweet boy that I will miss and grieve over.  There will be no new pets in my near or even far future of that I am sure.  I couldn't bare the eventual loss.  We have one more dog left, Dru, and she's going to be a sad little pooper for awhile.

I really hate this part of pet ownership.