Nanook

Six weeks ago, our dogs went to the vet for their regular checkups. At the time, all their X-rays and blood tests looked normal. Aside from being fat, Nanook was healthy. But over the last few weeks, he's eaten less and less. At the same time though, he didn't look like he was losing any weight. Saturday morning, it was cool enough to take the dogs on a walk, and Nanook just couldn't keep up. He was panting only a few hundred feet in, and we could tell it was taking all his energy to trail along behind us. And so we took him to the vet, where he was diagnosed with a massive tumor that's squishing all his internal organs.

He's scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning. The catch is, until they open him up we don't know what we're looking at. How many organs, if any? Is it cancer? Will we put him through this pain and suffering, only to have to put him down in another month or two? Will it cost $500 or $5,000? What is right, what is humane, what can we afford? We're in the position of drawing a line, with no preparation, with no time to think.

Nanook's been with us for over seven years now. Todd got him on June 14,2002, only a few months after we started dating. We nursed him back to health as a puppy. He rode with us to Wisconsin, he went with Todd to North Carolina. He's lived all over this town. I've chased him through neighborhoods and woods, when he and Niki would escape on their adventures. When he wandered away at the lake for hours, and we thought we'd never see him again, we were both devastated. He goes hiking with us, he's Niki's best friend - what will she do, without her pack? He shouldn't have survived the heartworms, or the neglect he and his sister went through, but he did. He battled demodectic mange for years. And he's still a happy, cuddly dog. Even now, with a giant tumor squeezing his lungs and his intestines, he still wags his tail and barges through the back door. He's a good dog, and I don't want him to die, not like this, out of the blue.