Quack left us August 20th 2018, he died at home surrounded by his family. Our large animal vet Dr Wendy who also does home euthanasia came to our farm and ended Quack’s life for us. He had had a good day. His had lots of treats and even more hugs. Some of his favorite people, Erin who lives next door and Alex a long time family friend came to visit. He had known them both his whole life and considered them part of his pack. He “smiled” at them. Quack always made this goofy “smile” when he was really happy to see people. He’d wrap his lips over his teeth and open his mouth really wide. He did that at his friends when they came in. Oh it hurts so much that I’ll never see that goofy smile again. People say, “You will know when its time”. I can’t say that I truly did know that day, it could have been the next day or later that week. He was still eating, he could still get outside although it was hard to do that. He was not comfortable but he was still happy. I didn’t want to get to a day that he wasn’t happy. He was a truly happy guy. He didn’t understand what was happening as his body failed and that confusion was awful to see. Selfishly I didn’t want to plan his death too far in advance because I didn’t want the sleepless night before day of his end. The morning of his death I just thought, I’m calling Wendy to see if she can come today and she could. All day everyone cuddled him. Dr Wendy came and we put a large pee pad under him (hey death is what it is). Dr Wendy got a needle into his front leg while I held him and then she put him to sleep. He nodded off in a couple minutes. Then after he was deeply asleep she gave him a drug that stopped his heart. He went peacefully, he just stopped being alive, no obvious pain from that last med. After he was dead, we carried him out to my car in an emergency stretcher for humans. The practicality of how to get such a large dog out to the car was easily solved with stretcher. We all carried him out. Andy and I immediately set off for Cornell with his body so they could do a necropsy and learn what they could about his horrible disease. Quack was only 5 years old when he died. He helped gain knowledge about osteosarcoma by participating in a clinical trial at Cornell. I have since gotten his necropsy results back from Cornell. The cancer had actually metastasized in both lungs. They were both full of tumors yet he never coughed even once. He just got weaker. We thought that was the hypertrophic osteopathy but it likely was that plus all the tumors in his lungs. Reading the necropsy was hard but also provided some closure. He was in good physical shape when he died, not too thin or too heavy. Oddly that made me feel good that despite the cancer he was in other ways in good shape. His necropsy was important to me and to Andy as it allowed Quack to make this last and ultimate contribution to science. Cornell sent back his ashes in a lovely wooden box. I have the box on our mantel with a wood burned portrait a friend did of Quack. So many people helped us through this. People helped with his go fund me page. We would never have been able to afford his care, it ended up being many thousands of dollars. People made Quack art, we have the already mentioned wood burned portrait, we have a lovely water color of him, we have an absolutely incredible portrait in colored glass. They are such treasures to us. Quack was goofy. He was fierce. He loved his family so much. I hope that research on osteosarcoma ends up finding a better way to help those dogs and people who like Quack, don’t respond to chemo. I will never forget him and I hold space for him in my heart forever.
Quack had been doing really well post immunotherapy, yeah I used the phrase “had been”. His front feet started swelling up and his eyes were red and goopy. Off to Cornell we went and the only thing they found was that his globulins were up a bit. Could just be the immunotherapy kicking in right? The met in his lung was way bigger again too but still not causing any health issues. We go home with pain meds and an anti- inflammatory med. These seem to help and life goes on with his front feet swelling and subsiding and his eyes getting a bit red then subsiding. Then he started having trouble with his back leg, he couldn’t easily get up and he couldn’t do the stairs or jump up on our bed. Back to Cornell we go and the diagnosis is hypertrophic osteopathy. They knock him out for x-rays and hint that we might consider not having him wake up.
