fiwit's blog: The Rest of Pip's Story

I had a 2-week business trip in November, so Pip went to the dog-sitter, as usual. Over the last year, he'd started having issues with coming up the stairs to her back deck (only way in/out of the house for the dogs). But I dog-sat for her in October and he handled those stairs with no problem.

Dee emailed me after the first week and told me he wouldn't do the stairs any more. Then a couple days later she told me he had swelling around his knee, and weakness in his back end. I immediately suspected cancer, and had a couple days to get used to the thought of it before getting back home to see him.

When I saw him, I knew. I've seen it enough over the last 12 years - cancer is the number one killer of greyhounds, I think, and I've seen too many greys with bone cancer. My dog-sitter lost 2 to bone cancer within a year of each other. So when we saw Doc, I told her I just needed her to confirm the diagnosis, which she did.

I had already decided that if it was cancer, I would let him go right then. He could have broken his leg in my car on the ride to the vet - the knee was that far gone, from what I saw on the x-ray.

Knowing you're doing the right thing doesn't always make it any easier, unfortunately.


Sandy has adapted well to being an only dog, and not only has she taken over his bed (that took her a couple days), but I've pulled out some of his old stuffed toys that I put away before he could completely disembowel them. I'll have to get a picture of her going after a stuffy that's 3 times bigger than she is -- it's a hoot.

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