Our Scottish Terrier's Last Few Days

Chancey is our beloved Scottish Terrier that I dog-napped in July 2008 from New London, CT. I’ve written several stories about him over the years. In April of 2014, he was diagnosed with a rare form of skin cancer. We were told that he had 6 maybe 12 months at the most. Well…39 months later he’s still with us.

He’s on Prednisone plus other drugs that are keeping the cancer at bay. He’s a very happy dog who loves treats, treats and more treats. He is especially fond of people, he’s never met anyone that he doesn’t like. We have had a few scares due to the cancer but none as bad as Sunday morning.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

I woke up at 4:45 a.m. and everything seemed fine. I decided to read a little to go back to sleep. At 5 a.m. Chancey came into the bedroom with blood pouring from his nose. When I walked down the hallway, I found blood everywhere, on the area rugs, the wooden floors, the walls, even in the bathrooms. I tried to clean some of it up but there was just too much. It was absolute chaos, we were at a loss on how to handle the situation. We used many towels to try to stop the bleeding and they rapidly became soaked.

We knew we had to get him up to the Emergency Vets which is about 25 minutes from our house. Until we left the house we had to put him out on the porch and that quickly became covered in blood.

Our other two dogs had been sniffing the blood and didn’t know what to make of it. We put them in the living room, the one area that Chancey hadn’t gone into. I insisted on driving which I rarely do since my driving makes Mary extremely uncomfortable. I wanted her to be the one to hold him and tell him everything was going to be okay.

The staff at the Veterinary Emergency & Specialty Hospital (VESH) in Deerfield, MA were amazing. They did a wonderful job of handling us plus assessing Chancey’s health crisis. The bleeding had stopped on the way up but while in the exam room it started up again. We tried cleaning it up with paper towels but there was just too much. A technician had to use a mop to clean the floor.

The ER Vet gave him a shot to help his blood to coagulate. We were also given an herbal supplement to help stem the bleeding. They also put him on Trazadone to keep him calm so he wouldn’t exacerbate the bleeding. I felt that we should have gotten a script for that as well!

When we got him home he was so exhausted and weak. He rested most of the day. I spent over an hour just scrubbing the blood off the floors. Then we took all the rugs outside to hose them down and amazingly all the blood came out. Looking around the house you couldn’t tell what a disaster it had been earlier in the day.

Our local Vet, Dr. Leanne, was amazing as well. Mary texted her (yes, she gave us her cellphone number back in 2014) with what had happened, what the test results were plus the medication he was given while at VESH. She agreed with the medication he was placed on and asked that we contact her on Monday to let her know how he was doing.

Monday, July 17, 2017

By Monday morning, Chancey was eating and moving around comfortably. The ordeal from the day before was a distant memory at least for him. Dr. Leanne observed that every time we think we may be near the end, Chancey rebounds.

We have had many discussions about Chancey’s “Quality of Life” regarding his cancer. After this bleeding episode, we could tell that he was coming to the end of his life. We agreed that if he stopped eating or had another bleeding episode we would make the decision to have him euthanized. Easy to type that word – but it is so painful to see it on my computer screen.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

This morning things went downhill quickly. Chancey normally is in the kitchen waiting for his food. Instead he was lying in the living room. I took his food over to him and he slowly ate it. I needed to give him his morning medication which gets wrapped up in cream cheese and he would not touch it. I tried his favorite treats and still no success.

I headed out to go do my morning workout. When I came back, I found that he had thrown up the contents of his breakfast all over the kitchen floor. I called our Vet and was told to bring him over immediately. She said we had come to the end. Unfortunately, Mary was out of town. I called her and she could be back by 5 p.m. The appointment to put him down was scheduled for 5:15 p.m.

The story ends here -- I don’t want to go into the bloody details on how devastated we were over his passing or how empty our lives were without him in it.