Jealous of the Angels~Love you Tippy!!!

Tippy! Go get your ball! Find it Tippy, find it!

Good girl, good girl!

Tip TIIP

Tippy-tai-munger

T. I. P. P. Yiiiii

Tippy, drop your toy.

Go get it Tippy, go get it.

Tippy come!

Sit. Tippy, siiit. Good girl.

These are just some of the fraises never to be said or heard again. Maybe when talking about or thinking about our years with Tippy these fraises may enter our mind and be spoken from our mouths, but never again on a daily basis to our beloved little girl. Yesterday Sunday February 26, 2012 at 3:22pm we had to put our beloved dog Tippy to sleep. Some of you may remember back in December when we found an ulcerated tumor on Tippy’s chest. “O this is probably nothing, just a skin irritation that we can remove and she will be as good as new after her recovery.” Says our vet. 10 days after surgery and the day she is getting her stitches removed there is another lump on her chest. “Hummm, this might be something more than what we had originally thought. We will have to remove this one as well, but this time lets send it off to get biopsied.” Said our vet. Now realize with every surgery there is recovery time. No play, which Tippy loves, only crate rest or limited snuggle time with us on the couch or bed as long as we can keep her from jumping down. Tippy hates and is miserable during her recovery period of 10 days, which I wont lie we let her out of mainly crate rest after 7 once we looked at her wounds and they were healing fine. Crate rest to Tippy is like being stuck in the house for those of you that have to get out and do something daily. These 10 days after every surgery was not living to Tippy. Two weeks after her first surgery we are dropping her off for the day for her second surgery and while in surgery they find 4 other lumps under her chest and remove those as well and send them off for biopsy. The phone rings after Tippy is home for 4 days after her second surgery and the news in not good. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Tippy has skin cancer and it is rapidly multiplying. I have never seen this type of cancer multiply so fast.” Said the vet. Again on the 10^th day after her second surgery she goes back in to get the stitches removed and to talk about our options and the vet has us map out her body in four different views to see if we can find any more tumors so they can be removed, again before the cancer can spread. The vet “With this type of cancer it is usually found in dogs who like to sun bathe. Does Tippy do that a lot?” Us “No, never. She is the dog that is always too hot to say long outside.” The vet “Well that is very unusual. This whole thing is. This type of cancer typically only shows up in 1 tumor, you remove it and if you catch it before it spreads your dog will live a long and happy life, cancer free as long as we keep removing the tumors. But we have already removed 6 tumors. I really can’t say what is going on” Us “Well the other issue is now she has a huge tumor under her ear and another on her side.” The vet “I know. When we took her stitches out we found that one too. We aspirated it and it is cancerous as well, but not the same kind of cancer as the first ones. And it too needs to be removed.” So after leaving and having to schedule yet another surgery 3 weeks after her second one we still think we will be ok because we are removing the cancer. Some where after her second surgery Tippy has developed a cough. Every week it seems to get a little worse. At first I was just thinking it was a side effect from having all of these surgeries pretty much back to back. But then I start to get concerned and ask my husband to tell the vet. Of course when you are thinking about cancer you tend to forget that your dog is coughing, so the vet doesn’t get told until after her 3^rd surgery when it had now become much worse. Again on day 10 we take her in to get her stitches from this latest battle removed. When Chris got home to pick Tippy up she had thrown up blood and mucus all over the couch and carpet in the living room and all over the floor in the kitchen. By now we are a little more than just concerned that she has a cough, we know something else is really wrong. When Chris gets to the vet he tells them about what he just found and we mention the cough and the other issues that have now come up. By now Tippy cannot go up the stairs or jump up on the couch which used to be a breeze for her. We thought since this last surgery and the one lump was on her side, right where she would need to use the muscles to jump and move herself up the stairs that those stitches and the pain/soreness from the surgery were the reason she wasn’t going up the stairs and was groaning and yelping when you picked her up. Boy were we wrong. The vet “The cough to me sounds like it could be pneumonia and that would explain why she can’t do the things she used to do. I’m going to run some blood tests and I’ll take her to the back to do some x-rays…Well the x-rays show that there is in fact something there. It could be one of two things. Pneumonia or a tumor. Her blood work also shows that she is severely dehydrated and has pancreatitis. To help fight off more cancer and after the second surgery the vet told us to put her on an all organic diet. So every few nights Chris was baking Tippy a whole chicken, shredding it and giving it to her with sweet potatoes and fresh green beans. Now this vet tells us that it is probably the sudden switch in diet that is causing the pancreatitis and the pneumonia could be causing the dehydrating and vomiting and climbing issues or the tumor/cancer could be causing it all.

Now remember this is our energetic, loves to run around and play and always has a toy or ball in her mouth dog.

She has now been through 3 major surgeries in less than 3 months with 10 days of crate rest in between each surgery. At this point this dog has basically spent two and a half of those 3 months hating life, so when the vet said at this point we have two options we made the choice that was right for our dog. The vet “Now we know this could be pneumonia or it could be a tumor. We can do one of two things. I want to treat this as pneumonia because if it is a tumor we will know after this treatment because the mass will shrink with the antibiotics if it is pneumonia or it will remain the same size or get larger if it is a tumor. Also because of how dehydrated she is I want to keep her in the hospital for a day or two and we put them in a tank that helps re-hydrate them and works on the pneumonia as well. Or I can give you the antibiotics and some injectable fluids that you can administer at home if you do not want her to have to stay here.” I get a phone call from Chris who puts the doctor on the line to tell me this and I tell him she is your dog this is your choice. He decided that she has been through enough, which she had, and that she hates it there since now only bad things happen to her when she goes there so he opts to do all the treatments at home. Besides if this does end up being a tumor we would rather her be at home with us than stuck in a cold doggy hospital, even if it was only going to be for a day or two. So Chris brings her home and the vet says call in 5 days and we can set up an appointment to see her again. We give her the prescription food and make sure she gets all her meds and add chicken stock to her water so that she is drinking enough. After the injectables are done she is now back on regular dog food and still on the antibiotic. Tuesday comes and goes and she is not getting any better. We know the vet wanted to do another x-ray but we felt since she was not improving at all, in fact she seemed to be getting worse that we would wait a few more days. When we do bring her back to the vet I am there this time. She rides exhausted with me in the car on her blue blanket and just sits silently and still on it on me in the waiting room. We get her weight and she is down a pound from the week before even though we are feeding her double the amount of food she should be getting and she is eating it all. She used to be a healthy 13 and now she is a frail 9 pounds. We get into the exam room and they take her back for x-rays. The vet “Unfortunately we are looking at a tumor. The size of the mass has not changed and they bring us back with her to take a look for our selves at both x-rays. Chris saw the first one on the last appointment but this was my first time seeing this huge thing growing inside of our little dog. The vet explains that the tumor is taking up about 30% of her left lung right now. Tippy at this point has not been putting much if any weight on her back left foot, the same side of her body the tumor is in and she is shaking at times like she is in a lot of pain. Not to mention if you touch her on her left side she jumps and yelps with pain. The vet says she is going to talk with all of Tippy’s doctors, we have been working with three of them, but she thinks they will all agree that there is nothing much we can do but make her comfortable until she either dies on her own or we make the decision because her quality of life is so bad, to put her down. She said she can recommend an oncologist for dogs but the success rate with all these different cancers is slim and if everything went perfectly and the cancer had not spread anywhere else but the lungs, she would maybe have a year and not a really good year. She gives us some pain meds to give her to see if it helps with all of her issues, we pay and head home with our sick little dog. We stopped at Costco and Chris got her a hotdog. She loved it. We didn't give it all to her for we thought it might make her sick, but since we could just sense that the end was near, we thought she would like it. Tippy loves to stand on your lap, front two paws standing in the window sticking her head as far into the breeze as she can on car rides. Today she just lays limp in my lap. I roll down my window and she seems interested and tries to get to the open air. I gently lift her up and help her get her head out the window. She is too tired to hold it up so she just rests it on the door, watching the scenery go by and smelling all the smells all the way home on this 47 degree day. I think as we round the corner to our house that this is probably the last time we will be taking her from the vet’s home with us alive and with her little head sticking out the window.We get home and give her her dose of pain meds. She just lays on the throw pillow on the couch and then she starts breathing really fast and seemed uncomfortable. I’m sure this is from the pain meds and eventually her breath evens out and she lies with her dad on the couch.

The vet calls us back the next day and talks to Chris and everyone there agrees that this is probably cancer and that it is more than likely everywhere in her body. They think the skin cancer was the last to show and internally she has had cancer for awhile. The vet said they have never seen cancer metastasize as quickly as it has in Tippy. Meaning in all their years combined no one there had ever seen cancer spread so fast and in so many different kinds. Every day she is a little worse and slowing all the things she loved to do get taken from her. On Wednesday February 22, 2012 she was having an ok day and we took lots of pictures of her with her toys. She even came up the stairs on her own with her big turkey in her mouth. It was a struggle for her and she had to zig zag to get up the stairs instead of just running up them like she used to, but she did it to be by me since I was up there and to play for a really short while. We took some more pictures until the batteries ran out and none of our other ones that fit the camera would work. And we just sat together. I believe it was that same day that as I threw her ball for her she slowly trotted into the bathroom to retrieve it, but once she came out she just peed on the floor. As I was cleaning it up she kind of looked at me with panic in her eyes so I quickly brought her outside. She had diarrhea for at least 15 minutes and her little butt was covered in poop. I scooped her up and quickly got her upstairs since I knew being picked up hurt her so much. I placed her in the tub and cleaned her as fast as I could. She wasn’t too found of baths either. I wrapped her in a little towel set it on the floor next to me and placed her down while I cleaned the tub. She just sat there and watched me. I wrapped her in Chris’s towel and came into the bedroom and sat with her on top of me on the chair. I knew she was comfortable because she settled right in. We listened to sad songs and I played “Jealous of the Angels” by Jenn Bostic and dedicated it to her, even though she was still alive and in my arms I knew she would be leaving us soon.

I told her all the things I need to. That I loved her, she was a good girl, I was so lucky to have her be a part of my life. We all loved her and that we were going to miss her and think of her often. She will never be forgotten and truly will be missed. I kissed her and told her if she needs to let go she could and I just sat with her on my chest as she fell asleep in my arms and I cried and cried. I still cry and don’t think I have stopped since that day. I knew she was suffering and wanted so bad to be able to take her pain or give her one more day to run around and play and just be the happy, playful Tippy we love. We probably sat there for 2 hours or more until she woke up and jumped down and then laid on the floor. I am so glad I got that moment with her. I will never forget it.

Thursday February 23, 2012~ Tippy is not getting any better so Chris tells his sister if they want to say goodbye to Tippy to come over today and do so because we are going to be putting her to sleep on Friday the 24^th because it is not fair to Tippy to make her have to live like this and we are the only people who can relieve her from all this pain. On this day when I came home from work Tippy was having a GREAT day. Not all better and nothing is wrong, but one of the best days she has had in weeks. Tippy was upstairs lying in our bed when Stacey and Colton came over. (Our bed was where she liked to be during her last weeks here on earth, so we were upstairs a lot.) It was around 78 degrees that day and I was out on the back porch with the other dogs talking on the phone with Kara when they pulled up. They came up onto the porch and as Stacey is asking me about how Tippy is doing here she comes trotting down the hallway with her turkey in her mouth.

Tail wagging and super excited. Stacey greets her and then looks at me and is like you guys are putting her down on Friday? Why? All I could say is Stace I swear to you this is the best she has been in over two weeks. So as we visited and Colton did his homework. I brought her blue blanket out, placed it on the ottoman she likes to sit on and had her sitting with me while we all hung out. Chris came home and was just as shocked as I was at her state of being that day. Just then and for those few hours we had hope for the first time in a long time that just maybe everything would be ok. Tippy stayed out with us until we all went in. She enjoyed some Taco Bell with us as well. When you know your dog is going to die you give them whatever they want and she wanted some of our tacos and she got some. We decided there was no way we could put her down now and decided to wait and see how she was this weekend. We were thinking maybe the pain meds are finally starting to help since they are now built up in her system. Then when they left she came inside and laid with her dad on the couch and then again in bed that night. Friday she was doing ok. Nothing like yesterday and the diarrhea was back. She has some spunk to her and chased her toy for two rounds and then she had to rest. That night she was a little worse and Saturday was really bad. She has no energy Saturday February 25, 2012, probably since she was up all night coughing and trying to get comfortable. Chris woke up first and found that she had had diarrhea all over the game room at some point. All she could do was lay around, she lost control now of her front left paw so she was very wobbly with her left side now not working, she couldn’t hold a toy in her mouth and she had diarrhea again. Stacey, Colton and Neil all came over for dinner and games that night and they immediately noticed a huge difference. She laid under the table at dinner and then under there for games. I accidentally hit her with my foot and she screamed and then ran to me for comfort and I felt horrible. We moved to the game room for a poker game and she sat in there with us for a bit and then just went to her crate since she couldn’t get up on the couch by herself any more. Once I got out I saw her staring up at the couch by the Chas lounge and then moving to a different part of the couch and staring up so I grabbed her and put her on the couch. I cleaned up the kitchen and went back in the game room until the game was over. We all came to the living room and I was sitting next to her and Chris asked Neil when he thought it was her time. Neil said clearly this is not living. You can tell she can’t breath and she is wheezing. She is in pain and this is no life for her. But, he said, I can’t tell you when it’s the right time. As they were talking she started really getting uncomfortable where she was sitting and would get up and flop down somewhere else. Then 5 seconds later get up and flop down again. She finally after trying several different places wobbled her way to the other end of the couch where the Chas lounge is and plopped herself down on the pillows and throw blankets. We were all gathered around her and saying good bye when she just looked at all of us with this desperate look and let out a long, loud cry and we all just lost it. We knew right then she needed our help and she just couldn’t take it anymore. After some time they left after saying what we now knew would be their last good byes to Tippy. Chris made sure to give her more pain meds which helped her to be able to lie down without being in pain but her breath was still labored and you just knew she was miserable.

I did not sleep Saturday night. I kept praying to God that if he was truly a merciful God that he would let her die peacefully in her sleep that night and end all of her pain, but He didn’t. I kept hoping for it and checking to see if she was still breathing when it got really quiet and I thought that she might be gone, but she was still alive, her little heart pumping away against all odds. She was in pain and by the look in her eyes you knew she wanted us to fix this. I just wish she knew we couldn’t really fix it this time. Chris tried calling the lady, who was going to put her to sleep here in our home, but she only works during the week and her phone is off on the weekends. Chris had to have called 15 different at home vets. One place had a line you could leave a voicemail and he did. I texted the owner of the rescue group ADRATI that I used to volunteer with to see if she had anyone. She only had the same people we had already tried but she said she would do what she could to help us and kept calling people. Around noon Dr. Magnus called Chris back. He said he was waiting to hear back from a tech but he could do this for us today and he would call us back. I texted Becky that we found someone to do it today and she asked “Have you ever let a pup go before?” No. I say. “Can I call you?” she asks and then she does. She knows how scary and sad this day is going to be for me since she has had to let many pups go. She explains to me all the things that could happen so that I know what to except and she reassures me that we are doing the right thing and that all Tippy is doing right now is existing and mainly suffering and therefore we are doing the right thing. It is the most humane thing for Tippy. She lets me know she is here for us whenever we may need her and to call if we need anything. Thank God for Ms. Becky Meade. At 2 the vet calls and says he cannot get a tech but if Chris is willing to help hold Tippy’s paw if he needs him to, could he do it. Chris says yes. “I’ll be there at 3” says Dr. Magnus. At this point I lose it. I cannot believe we are going to kill our beautiful little girl in just an hour. So many things rush through my head. Are we doing the right thing? Is it too soon? Have we not explored every option? What if she hates us for this? Am I going to go to hell for killing my dog? What if she just needs more time and then she will be fine? Why is this happening to her? To me? To us? I turn to Chris and say we have an hour let’s take Tippy on one last ride. We get Tippy on her blue blanket, get in the car and we just drive around the neighborhood for as long as Tippy can rest her head out the window. It was only maybe for 20 minutes but it was almost like she knew this was the end of her life here on earth and she was just taking it all in. She was looking up at the sky and at her surroundings; sniffing away and then she would occasionally look back at Chris then back to the window.

As we pull in to the driveway I set her down on her blanket in the drive way and we tell her to “Go potty Tippy... Good girl!” I go inside and give Chris some alone time with Tippy outside. She doesn’t want to do much, isn’t sniffing around she is just standing there staring up at him and only walking once he got too far away from him for her liking. I tell him to bring her in. We place her on the couch and just sit with her. She again cannot get comfortable and Chris contemplates giving her pain meds. I say it’s almost over lets just spend time with her as alert as she can be as long as it doesn’t get too bad. Chris grabs the blue dog bed pillow that he got for her the first day her brought her home when she was just 6 weeks old and lays it by her. For awhile she just lays curled around it and then she gets up, curls into a ball and lays her head on her bed. I look at the time and I realize that there is only 8 minutes until the vet will be here. I tell Chris I know she is comfortable, but maybe you should hold her while she is still alive and comfort her since there is not much time left. So he does. He picks up his little dog on her dog bed and lays her on his lap and just pets and talks to her. I get up to blow my nose and as I do I see the doctor walking up the stairs. He is a tall, thin guy with glasses. He was very sweet, compassionate and caring and answered any of our questions. (Including Chris’s random question at one point before he injected Tippy at the end with “And where do you live?” haha.) So he comes in, our other 3 dogs go running in, he shakes my hand and I of course start to cry again. I walk him into the living room where Tippy is and he shakes my husband’s hand. He explains what he is going to do and talks with our other dogs and they run around him and sniff all of the medical things in the case. He gets a syringe ready and explains that we should rub Tippy’s ears because some dogs hate this shot because it can really burn. So we are talking to and rubbing Tippy and all the sudden she yelps and freaks out for a second. We calm her down and the doctor is rubbing the site and tells us he only got about a quarter of it in and we have to get all of it in. So we rub her again and he gets it all in but only after she is yelling in pain, thrashing her body and then whips around to try to bite the vet. He said it hurts so bad for some dogs because of their bodies PH. Chris said he had read something about that but we certainly didn’t think it would hurt her that bad. After a very short period of time you could see her body slowing start to collapse on Chris’s lap until she was just limp. This was just the first part, the anesthesia. Chris then moves her limp body onto her dog bed that is still in his lap with her and she lets out the last bad cough of hers that we would ever hear, but it was only one short cough, not a long painful cough like before. We bring her into the kitchen where we have the area set up for her. I didn’t know that she was going to be out like that, but before he gave her the shot something told me to kiss her, rub her head and tell her I loved her and I’ll see you later. I’m glad I did. As she lay there limp on the table the vet shaves her back paw and puts a catheter in. Chris is sitting in front of her face petting her and talking to her. The vet looks at us and says “Let me know when you are ready.” I am crying again we finally compose ourselves enough and the vet says “We find it is best if you just pet her and talk sweet to her until I let you know that she is gone.” He asks again if we are ready we shake our heads and start talking to her and saying good bye and how sorry we are that she is the best dog and a good dog and we love her. The vet put the stethoscope to her chest and checks a few places and then tells us “You can stop now she is gone.” If you have never done this before like we had not, you have no clue how fast this goes. With the exception of the minute where the first shot hurt her it was very peaceful and you know she felt no more pain after that. After what seemed like a few minutes I sat with her and pet her. I could finally pet down her whole body from head to tail, which we hadn’t been able to do in weeks because it was too painful for her. So I sat there for a few minutes more just talking to her and petting her. Chris and the vet wrapped her in her blue blanket that she had been with so often lately and the vet took her out to his car. He was very nice and told us about where to pick her up after she is cremated and that he trusts this place and has been using them for years. He said again I am so sorry for you loss, I told him to take good care of our girl, he shook our hands and headed out the door. I stood in that doorway holding Chester and watched him pull away in his white Toyota thinking, I can’t believe what just happened…our Tippy is really gone and we now only have 3 dogs.

It is quieter now. No more coughing or sounds of pain coming from next to me everyday. That is good, but the quiet haunts us now. All we wanted was for her to find peace and rest. Lets be honest, all we really wanted was for her to get better and live out the rest of her life. She never even made it to 9 years old. We wanted her to no longer have to fight the cancer and the large tumor growing rapidly in her lung, but it’s quiet. I can’t take the silence right now even though I did not want her to suffer any more, it serves as a reminder that she is no longer with us and never will be here on earth with us again. I cry…a lot. Sometimes more than I feel I should because I know people think “She was just a dog.” Well she was more than just a dog, she was like our child, our friend, a loved one and we miss her…I miss her.  As I sit here typing this in my kitchen I thought I just heard her cough in the living room, crazy how the mind plays tricks on you sometimes. I guess maybe it’s because I am so used to hearing her struggle for air and cough or maybe it’s a sign the she is ok. If that makes any sense. I don’t think hearing her cough means she is ok except I know she is no longer coughing where she is now, so I’ll take it as a sign. Thanks Tippy <3