Emmet, 12/13/97-08/11/08

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.

~Roger Caras

Today was a very emotionally hard day; we had to say good-bye to Emmet. Ten days ago, Emmet wasn't looking well, and wasn't being his normal, goofy self. We took him to see the vet., and she diagnosed him with a kidney infection and put him on antibiotics. She said he seemed very sick, so she took additional blood for testing. While Emmet seemed to be getting better, the vet. said his blood indicated there might be more than just a kidney infection. She thought he could possibly have an autoimmune disorder or cancer. After a couple of days on antibiotics, we were extremely happy to see that he was feeling better, although he wasn't fully back to his goofy self. Last night, before Mat and I went to bed, Emmet was acting a little strange, and he didn't want to come upstairs where he always sleeps. At 3:30 in the morning, Jack had a nightmare. As I went down to check on Jack, I noticed that Emmet never came upstairs. After Jack fell back to sleep, I looked for Emmet in all of his usual resting places and finally found him lying on the floor in the kitchen. He wasn't responsive to me, and he looked horrible. After I freshened his water, he attempted to stand up and he collapsed. Mat took him to the hospital. They did tests and concluded he was bleeding internally, most likely caused by cancer. The vet. was able to see a tumor, but she couldn't determine where it was located because there was too much fluid in his abdomen. They said they needed to operate to stop the bleeding, but Emmet was too unstable. Mat came home, and we were able to take the kids in to say goodbye to Emmet.

We miss him dearly.