Under the tree and dreaming, continued…

Let’s pick up this happy narrative where we left off, shall we?

So, after all the drama with Sierra, as a last ditch effort before putting her down, we gave her a course of antibiotic. And wouldn’t you know, two days later she was up and around, acting like nothing had ever been wrong. At the vets, she’d become known as the dog with 9 lives.

Fast forward 6 months.

Coming home one Saturday, we’re walking in the house when we hear a weird cry from upstairs. I race upstairs and Sierra is having trouble getting up. She starts limping around, almost as though her leg has fallen asleep. I don’t think much of it as I help her downstairs and out the door.

But, the soreness in the leg continues. And continues. And continues.

So, towards the end of March, we take her in for an exam. The Doc shoots an xray of her hip and brings it in to show us. She (the vet) can’t see anything, so she proscribes a course of pain pills and rimadyl, to help decrease any swelling that she may be experiencing in the hip.
Slowly, the dog made gradual improvements, to the point where last week I began to take her on short walks again.

Until this weekend.

At some point over the weekend, something happened and Sierra lost all use of the leg. She wouldn’t put any weight on it and started dragging the leg around. We were carrying her up and down the stairs and trying to make her as comfortable as possible.

We took her in for xrays yesterday and were completely unprepared for what they showed. Apparently, the top of Sierra’s femur was rotted away by cancer and at some point over the weekend, completely snapped off. The xray showed the ball of the femur still in the socket of the hip and a bunch of bone fragments between there and the rest of the femur.

The dog with 9 lives has run out of life.

We’re picking up our daughter from college on Friday, so she can come home and spend some time with Sierra. I’ll take her, (the dog) in Saturday morning and go through the bitter ritual one more time.

We just put down once of our cats (12 years old and wasting away from some mystery cancer) two weeks ago. April has turned into the worst month for our family. My mother in law passed away several years ago in April, as well as a nephew. We’ll have put down two cats and two dogs in April as well.

For a month that can be so beautiful, with blooming plants and spring in the air, it has turned into the bitter season for us.