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Liam
Liam died in my arms last night as I was carrying him to bed. He had gotten too weak to walk more than a few steps at a time. I was walking down the hallway and I said "Time for night night" or "let's go night night" or something to that effect and he just went. His body stiffened for a moment and I heard Thax yell something but I said "It's OK" His heart and lungs just stopped. His bladder let go and he peed on me a little but I just held him and Thax held both of us as his body just gave out. We told him how much we loved him and that it was OK and he was a good boy as the cheyne-stokes breaths came and went. I am so grateful that I was holding him, that he trusted me to keep him safe and loved in that moment. It was so sweet and gentle and it broke my heart.
He had started coughing in the mornings around the beginning of October and had a couple of episodes of fainting. The vets had told us to expect coughing in the morning as a sign of congestive heart failure, and to come in for heart medicine when he started doing that. After a week on the heart meds, he was just getting slower and slower, losing weight very fast, having times of breathing and heartbeat very fast, appearing dizzy, off his food, not able to get up and follow me around the house as he always did. The last 3 days or so he wouldn't even eat his favorite freeze dried chicken treats.
I made an appointment with a vet cardiac specialist. We saw her Tuesday and she said that Liam's heart looked okay but she was concerned about some shadows she saw in his lung x rays. She said it wasn't her specialty so she didn't want to diagnose, but thought it was probably either cancer or fungal pneumonia. Referred us back to our regular vets to try a course of antibiotics and we had just started those last night but I do think it was probably cancer and it took him very quickly. We buried him in the yard by a small loquat tree that he liked to pee on. Sunny dug in the loose dirt by the grave. Boba knew something was up but didn't know what, so he stood quietly nearby with a worried look on his face. I planted flower seeds. Liam was a good boy and we loved him very much.
He had started coughing in the mornings around the beginning of October and had a couple of episodes of fainting. The vets had told us to expect coughing in the morning as a sign of congestive heart failure, and to come in for heart medicine when he started doing that. After a week on the heart meds, he was just getting slower and slower, losing weight very fast, having times of breathing and heartbeat very fast, appearing dizzy, off his food, not able to get up and follow me around the house as he always did. The last 3 days or so he wouldn't even eat his favorite freeze dried chicken treats.
I made an appointment with a vet cardiac specialist. We saw her Tuesday and she said that Liam's heart looked okay but she was concerned about some shadows she saw in his lung x rays. She said it wasn't her specialty so she didn't want to diagnose, but thought it was probably either cancer or fungal pneumonia. Referred us back to our regular vets to try a course of antibiotics and we had just started those last night but I do think it was probably cancer and it took him very quickly. We buried him in the yard by a small loquat tree that he liked to pee on. Sunny dug in the loose dirt by the grave. Boba knew something was up but didn't know what, so he stood quietly nearby with a worried look on his face. I planted flower seeds. Liam was a good boy and we loved him very much.