12 years, 7 months, and 1 day in Every day scata

We had Skittles put to sleep yesterday.

I’m not going to look back to see if I wrote, about what was wrong. I really can’t be bothered.

Last week while I was doggo sitting, Skit started having issues with his breathing. Pam brought him to the vet, and upon X-ray, they found out that his spleen was extremely enlarged, and there was a tumor either attached to it, or right behind it.

The swelling in his abdomen was pressing against his diaphragm making breathing hard.

His LFT’s and Kidney functions were horrid, too.

So they put him on Prednisone, which helped him a lot. He was comfortable, being normal Skit. We figured we’d keep him on pred until it stopped working. I mean, at that point, who cares about pred being bad long term.

When we started weaning him down, he started feeling lousy. I was going to call Doc to see if we could keep him on a maintenance dose to keep him comfortable, but then we decided… no, we can’t do that. It’s not fair to him, really. So I sent Doc a text on Tuesday saying I was going to be calling the office in the morning for an appointment on Saturday (meaning this coming one) to have him put to sleep, and asked if it was okay if we were there, and if I was the one to hold off the vein. Her answers were yes, and I was prepared to come to grips with having him go Home.

Tuesday night, Skit went down hill fast. It’s like his soul and body knew, y’know?

I laid with him in bed, stroking him, talking to him, until about midnight. I went upstairs and woke Pam, and said “I don’t think he’s going to make it through the night. ”

She came down and we just sat with him. I gave him another Zanaflex crushed up in some ice cream. I was kind of hoping that it would have relaxed his heart enough to stop, y’know? Unfortunately he ended up puking, so. Yeah. That didn’t work.

As the hour went on, he became unresponsive. I kept checking his gums which were getting paler and paler. his breathing got very shallow, and started to slow down. His gums had turned completely white. White as a sheet of paper. One agonal breath. He was gone.

Then he jerked, lifted up his head and looked around like “What the fuck was that?!”

We sat with him a while longer. I told Pam to go to bed, I’d stay up with him .

His gums got pink, then a good deep pink like he always has been. He jumped off the bed, got some water, went back to bed.

Got off the bed, got some water, went back to bed again.

I was hovering over him. Skit hates that. He wouldn’t relax. As soon as he would drift off, he would wake back up, so I got up and came over here to the computer like I always do, like everything was normal, and he fell fast asleep.

When morning came, he went outside as usual. I didn’t want to feed him because when he pukes, he pukes. so I just gave him a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt.

I called the vet at 8, as soon as they opened. They said to bring him in around 1 pm.

He was acting so normal. So excited for the ride, barking, and being a typical beagle.

Doc and… I hate that I don’t know her name, dammit. She’s worked there forever, this one tech. And she loves Skit to death. They came in, we talked a little, Talked about the whole “he died during the night, and then came back to life and acted completely normal” thing. It’s not like I didn’t know what was going on, and they know that. They knew that I was being honest, and that it confused the fuck out of me because he was dead.

They gave him some sedation and he finally started to chill and I helped him lay down on the blanket.

Pam and I talked about him, while they waited outside the room to make sure the sedation had really taken affect.

Doc came in, I sat on the floor and held off his vein while she put an IV cath in him. She slowly injected him with the pentobarbital, I laid my head on him and just whispered to him about all the wonderful things he’ll be able to do again.

And he was gone.