Merlot

Last Friday we discovered major lumps on our dog's neck. Merlot was a Cocker Spaniel and hadn't had a haircut in several months, so we must have missed them amid all the hair. We had been noticing his vision (or lack thereof) as he was stumbling over nothing, running into things (large things like flower pots and fences) and not finding food that had dropped on the ground. Also, a few days prior to finding the lumps, he'd suddenly had a lack of appetite - very unusual for our garbage hound. Our wonderful vet came Tuesday afternoon and confirmed our suspicions - lymphoma & blindness. She said he's relatively young (8 1/2) to develop lymphoma, but it's pretty common across the breeds. She gave us a few options - medication (with unpleasant side effects), chemo, and of course, euthanization. Besides being well out of the range of our budget, neither the meds or chemo would cure him and make him better - just stretch things out. So we made the hard decision of having him put to sleep. It wasn't the way we'd wanted to find a new home for him...something we'd been considering in recent months as his behavior had changed and he'd gotten more aggressive (playfully, not violent) with Joshua...some of that may have been an effect of the disease or blindness, we don't really know. Wednesday afternoon, our vet came and picked him up and took him to her office at home to take care of him. Joshua did well with this, as we had explained to him that Merlot was very very sick and wasn't going to get better so the vet was going to take him to a special place where they could make him feel better...we didn't want to have him think that the vet was going to kill his dog. We will eventually tell him that Merlot has gone to be with Heavenly Father, but not right away. Joshua gave a couple of bags of dog treats that we had left to the vet when she picked up Merlot and asked her to give him one for breakfast each day...that about did me in. What has saved Joshua a lot is that a friend brought him a little beanie baby puppy that he has been dragging around on Merlot's leash since Wednesday afternoon...that seems to really be helping him. It all happened so fast - but we didn't want to watch the poor dog suffer or maybe wait too long and have Joshua find him if he didn't wake up or something. Merlot had a lot of annoying habits and traits (the dining room carpet that needs to be replaced is a testimony of that!), but he was wonderful with Joshua as a baby and so very protective. He will be missed.