We lost another dog to cancer

About a month after we lost our dog Bandit to osteosarcoma in March, we adopted a sweet female pit bull mix named Greta.  The jump from an 84 pound Lab, Shepherd, Husky, Pit mix who was strong enough to be considered a force of nature to a 49 pound pit bull mix made Greta seem petite.

Her happy personality was on display from the moment we picked her from the animal shelter.  She happily cuddled in my wife's lap for the 30 minute ride home.

She had had a rough early life, having been bred at least twice by the age of 2, followed by being abandoned in a fenced outdoor holding pen at a shelter in West Virginia.  Luckily for Greta and for us, she was transferred to the Loudoun County Animal Shelter which is where my wife discovered her.

Despite having shorter legs than Bandit did, Greta loved accompanying my wife on 2-3 mile walks once or twice a day.  She found people much more interesting than other dogs or toys and had a number of friends in the neighborhood.

Bandit had always wanted to be a lap dog but Greta was actually small enough for that to be a regular occurrence.  It's hard to tell whether she enjoyed it more or whether we did.  She was extremely affectionate.

 

In early September, we noticed some swelling on her neck, so my wife took her to the vet.  To the vet's surprise, it was not an infection but instead turned out to be lymphoma and a fairly advanced stage at that.  Apparently that's rare in a dog so young.  She was prescribed steroids which did a wonderful if somewhat temporary job of reducing the swelling.  It was lovely having an extra 6 weeks of time with her where she was relatively symptom free.

Unfortunately once the final dose was done, her swelling came back with a vengeance.  It quickly advanced from being an uncomfortable nuisance for her to starting to obstruct her breathing.  I'll never forget the look in her eyes which seemed to question why this was happening to her.

She was sweet and loving to the end, despite all she was going through.  We'll always miss her even though she was only with us for 7 short months.

Saying goodbye to a special dog

 

We lost our very special dog to an osteosarcoma a few days ago.  He started limping a little over 4 months ago and it took a while to diagnose what was causing the problem which kept getting progressively worse.  We were so focused on figuring out what was wrong that it dominated our recent conversations about him.  I wanted to make sure it didn't overpower people's memory of the most affectionate dog I've ever met.

Bandit entered our lives a little unexpectedly about 10 years ago.  He was the third dog we've had during the 30+ years we've been married.  For some strange reason, each of them was roughly double the weight of their predecessor, progressing from 16 to 42 to Bandit's whopping 84 pounds.

Bandit had a rough start in life.  We adopted him from Rappahannock Animal Welfare League (RAWL), the same shelter where we had adopted our previous dog, Sandy, who was very sweet but much less outgoing than Bandit.  They do a wonderful job of socializing their dogs.  Apparently Bandit had been chained outside for much of his early life.  The shelter got him due to an altercation he'd had with a feral cat coupled with the fact that his first family had not seen fit to get him vaccinated against rabies.  He needed to be quarantined for 6 months for the possible rabies exposure.  They're a "no-kill" shelter but apparently that doesn't automatically apply in quarantine cases.  After seeing what a sweet dog Bandit was, they opted to keep him for the 8 months it took to get him through the quarantine period plus his recovery from being neutered because they were sure he'd be adopted.  How he stayed so friendly and loving given that rocky beginning amazes me.

My wife fell in love with the personality he displayed in the shelter's pictures of him playing with 5 beagle puppies.  His face managed to exude good-natured playfulness and joy in a way that we both found irresistible.  She also chose a smaller dog to look at in case the fact that Bandit was part pit bull (he was a lab-shepherd-husky-pit mix) made me nervous.  Any chance of me being worried about him being aggressive disappeared when they let him out of his kennel for us to meet him.  He was so affectionate that both of us ended up sitting on the floor petting him for quite a while until we were finally able to sign the adoption papers.

Since he had been chained up for much of his life, he didn't have much experience with cars.  I had to lift him into the truck where he sat nervously and stiff-legged in my wife's lap for the entire 90 minute drive home.  The only difficulty he gave us was with his initial nervousness about car rides.  He discovered that collapsing as low as possible could delay his ride for a while because it's so hard to lift an 84 pound dog who has cemented himself to the ground.  His nervousness about cars persisted for about a month until we took him to a place where we could bathe him.  He was so relieved to be done with the bath that he leapt into the back of the truck to go home.  After that, going for rides was one of his favorite activities.

 

When we adopted Bandit we lived in a suburb of DC which had lots of walking paths and he was happy to hike as far as we wanted.  Bandit usually preferred people to other dogs.  One notable exception was a dog half his size which lived near the walking path we took on a daily basis.  They loved to wrestle and often looked like tiny dinosaurs as they chest-butted each other while smiling the entire time.  It was like our own version of a Godzilla movie where the monsters are furry and friendly.  They would get so tired having fun that they would eventually collapse on the ground.  Once they had recovered somewhat, they would drag themselves towards each other to start again.

A year after we brought him home, we moved to the more rural suburbs.  Out in the country we discovered Bandit was really more of a medium-sized dog.  While technicians who came to the old house to fix things were nervous around Bandit, those visiting the new house often had dogs larger than Bandit and were happy to pet him.  Bandit always loved finding a new person to give him attention.

It was shortly after we moved to the country that he met his favorite neighbors.  Their oldest daughter bonded with him almost instantly.  She seemed to have a sixth sense about when we'd be passing their house and frequently treated him with bacon and other snacks.  After a few times being spoiled this way, his tail would start wagging wildly whenever we approached their house.

He looked forward to spend time with us each evening.  He often positioned himself between us and nudged our arms to convince us to pet him until our arms were tired and sometimes sore.  There are few things which could relax me like spending time with that affectionate bundle of love.

If I happened to drive by my wife and Bandit walking on my way home from work, Bandit would drag my wife towards the house to see me.  Bandit was a force of nature.  If he saw deer, he could spin either of us by the leash in his struggle to give chase.  Sometimes my wife would let go of his leash once they were close enough to the house to see me.  I have happy memories of him running down the road towards me and the uber-affectionate greeting I would get when he finally reached me.  The stress of the commute and a long day at work melted away instantly under his enthusiastic greeting.

There were few things which Bandit enjoyed more than having his face pet by my wife.  He would get into the strangest positions to coax her into stroking his face.

In the last few years, he had been moving a little more hesitantly and was not quite so keen to go on long walks but his sweet nature was just as strong as ever.  Those signs of him slowing down triggered me to start paying more attention to the time we had left with him.  I knew dogs as special as him don't come along often and I wanted to enjoy every precious moment.

He was sweet to the end despite being needing to take 3 potent medications for the ever increasing pain he was in while his doctors tried to diagnose his problem.  They ultimately determined it was an osteosarcoma and that the cancer had spread to his lungs.  We held out hope until the diagnosis made it obvious that we needed to let him go.

Both of us loved every minute we had with Bandit.  It's hard realizing we'll never be greeted by this big lovable goofball again.