Man's best friend

This little doggy gave us a scare today.

He is 12 1/2 years old. Pretty old for a dog, but not unreasonably old.

The last 6 months or so we have noticed that he is increasingly having a hard time breathing. It is not constant. It comes and goes. We made an appointment with our vet who diagnosed a partially paralyzed larynx. Not much you can do for that. I guess he could have surgery and remove his larynx, but he would never be able to bark again.

Hmmm. . . . that may not be such a bad idea.

Today we could tell he didn't feel good. His breathing grew quite ragged. He lost his breakfast, several times. We finally let him go outside and he just walked round and round the house. He collapsed once. Ems was in tears. We thought this was it.

We tried to coax him to come back into the house, but he didn't seem to want to. We were pretty sure he wanted to go outside and die somewhere. Eventually he got whatever was bothering him out of his system, but his breathing was still seriously labored.

It was snowing hard and he was covered in snow. We got him in the house and tried to give him some steroids which the vet prescribed. He struggled for about 1/2 hour then suddenly settled down. His breathing became normal. He is relaxed and happy now.

But we know his time is not long. We were all traumatized by today's experience and realize that soon a hard decision will have to be made.

Thankfully, it won't have to be made today.