A couple of days ago I wrote about some of the challenges of balancing home life and working at home when the responsibilities of home life can jump in at any time. I mentioned how our dog Timber had been not eating and throwing up on the carpet, which was not all that unusual for him as this might happen once or twice a year.

Timber Scoping Out the Area from the Trees

This time was different. He was not going back to eating normally as he usually did and was getting skinnier all the time. When we took him to the vet, she mentioned that she might have felt something in his abdomen so we had x-rays done.

When the x-rays came back they mostly showed fragments from the rib bones we gave him the previous night just to get him to eat something. The radiologist also mentioned that the intestines looked like they were larger than normal. The vet suggested some different food and to see if he would get better.

He was still not eating much after a couple of days and would puke up most of what he did eat. On Monday he went in for a different type of x-ray procedure that would show more detail. They found that there was a blockage right at the bottom of the stomach at that the intestines were four times larger in diameter than normal. The vet sent him back home to us with some decisions to make about what to do next, as the blockage could be benign and possilby removed through surgery or it could be a cancerous tumor which would likely mean a very poor outlook.

Yesterday he went to the vet again to have surgery to take of the problem if they could. What they found seemed to surprise everyone. They found a tumor that measure three inches by four inches half way down the small intestines. Yes, that was inches - not centimeters.

We were all surprised not only that it was there, but it was so large. Other than what seemed to just be finicky eating he didn't show signs that we or different vets over the years had picked up on. He had never whined, cried or seemed to be in major discomfort other than what appeared to be a sensitive stomach.

Since the cancer was so large and so far along we had to make the only decision we really could make. He never woke up from the operating table.

Timber would have been nine years old August of this year. We definitely had some good times with him over the years and we like to think that he had a better life with us than what would have been his fate if we had not rescued him. We found him in Kansas City cold, wet and shivering behind a garbage can. He might not have lasted much longer then, as he was just a few weeks old, had a severe case of worms, and had chewed away part of his tail.

With us he got to experience camping trips, birthday parties, mountain bike rides, hikes through the woods and different parts of the country.

Now we hope that he can somehow remember us as fondly as we think of him. He will always live in our hearts and minds.

Goodbye Timber, we miss you.