Our “Kody Bear” died on the 23rd.
He hadn’t been eating much for a couple days, then on the 23rd, he puked up blood in the middle of the night, and then puked again (just water/bile) in the morning. He looked very bloated (he’d been getting larger over the past month or so, but we just thought he was getting chubby from not running around) so we took him to the vet.
They did some x-rays, and it turned out he had a large tumor on his spleen (apparently it’s a common aggressive thing for shepard breeds – and he was part shepard). He had so much fluid build up, the vet said it was hard to see many of his organs, but that it had likely spread (they couldn’t be 100% sure without invasive surgery). It was also likely that even if they did sugery, he wouldn’t ever fully recover and he’d have no quality of life (and be in a lot of pain).
We asked if we could bring him home to die, but the vet said it would get very “bad” – he would be in more and more pain, and he’d be vommiting more and more until his body gave out. He wasn’t in much (apparent) pain, but he was visibly uncomfortable (couldn’t find a way to lay down). We took the vet’s suggestion to put him to sleep. We took Jonah in to say goodbye, and Janet’s mom came in too. After Jonah left with his Grandma, we petted him for about 20 minutes until he was just about to fall asleep. The vet gave him the injection and he went peacefully to sleep.
My grandmother told Jonah on Christmas eve that Kody and Great-Grandpa wanted to play, and Kody would keep him company. 