Will Someone Please Stop These People From Yelling "Dragon?"

Nox came home today, and so far she she is very sweet and cute. :)

She is all black with a couple little spots of white here and there. She is totally a blank slate, and seems to know zero commands. Josie and I will be amending that daily, as we can.

She seems to be way, way more calm than Darwin. It's weird. When I first came home a few minutes after she was dropped off, she was eating and didn't even look up when I came in.

It will be fun to see her learn and grow. Especially because we are armed with all this dog knowledge that we didn't have when we first got Darwin.

I have no idea how she'll react to sleeping in the crate. Hopefully it will be uneventful...

Today we met a puppy who will potentially be our new puppy. She is a very cute, all black, blue heeler mix.

More to come, stay tuned.

He is gone now. We already miss him dearly. We will love him always.

So we do not forget, this is a list of all the stupid and silly nicknames we've used for Darwin over the years. He pretty much responded to all of them.

( Darwin's nicknames )

Three weeks after the saga where we almost lost him, it looks like his time might be up. The vet has basically suggested that we could keep him going - that he is such a good dog that he'd do anything we asked of him; he would go through and try whatever we wished to try - but to what end? He IS going to get worse, it is only a matter of how prolonged it will be. Right now, his chest is full of blood, making it hard for him to breathe. If we were to give him several blood transfusions and time to try to recuperate the lost blood, and then went ahead with chemotherapy drugs, it would extend how long he has. But... He will likely continue to bleed from the tumor. The tumor may or may not shrink from the medicine. There may or may not be other tumors in his body. How much is it fair to put him through?

I love him as much as any boy could love his dog. I wish this weren't the end. I have wished so hard that he'd just live another eight or nine years! I know, it may seem silly, but I wanted our kids to meet him and love him. I wanted him to live long enough for us to have kids, for them to grow to an age where they could play with him, and for them to genuinely know him, and, I guess, miss him, too. I wanted them to pull on his curly tail and for him to not get annoyed about it. Which he wouldn't. Because he's such a wonderful dog.

We are going to go take him for a long walk. Tomorrow might well be his last day. We've pretty much decided that that is what is most fair to him and to us, and that we don't want to prolong this for more days than we have to.

He looks so normal on the outside. He is acting kind of run-down, because of all the blood loss, though. It will probably only get worse. I love him so much, and I wish that that alone could fix him.

I will always love him. I will almost remember him. And I will probably always compare every dog to him. He has the best personality, the most omnivorous diet, the smartest brain, and most agile body, and cutest ears and tail of any dog I've ever met. This seems so cruel and unfair, but I know that he has lived a good life. A wonderful life, even. And he has done things that most dogs will never get to do.

I will love you always, Darwin.

Darwin is still alive and stable for now. We must quickly leave for Albuquerque. More exposition to come.

The doctor in Durango called us about an hour after we got to sleep last night, at 11:30pm. She said they'd found some kind of plaque around Darwin's pericardium and that she'd scraped it off. She said that that, combined with fluid in the belly was a strong sign of cancer, and it would probably be late-stage, and have developed significantly already. The apparent blockage in his digestive track could be, basically, a tumor, I guess. She said that it would take significant, all-night work just to try and keep him stabilized, and that, in effect, it wasn't worth it, because there is a strong likelihood the plaque around his heart will come back.

I could barely process what was being said, partly due to lack of sleep from both nights, and partly because she was telling me that Darwie has no chance of surviving. Josie took the phone got the same run-down, and told the doctor to please, keep working, and at least keep him alive until we could get there in the morning! The doctor was somber and the outlook is grim.

We spent the night crying and sometimes wailing, and also trying to sleep. He is our son, and we love him dearly, and we never wanted anything bad to happen to him. He didn't deserve this. He was the best dog in the world.

Some tiny part of us is still hoping that there is a way he could survive. We are leaving for the hour-long car trip soon with a good friend, Sujan, who has four dogs of her own. She knows and loves Darwin, too, and has essentially become his aunt. She volunteered to drive us, because she knew we'd be a mess.

So, we are going, probably to say our last good-byes to our friend, our son, our beloved pet. He was a very special dog, as the vet's husband in Durango told me yesterday. You didn't have to know him well to figure that out. It was clear to everyone.

Darwin is in Durango now, and will likely have surgery in the morning. They still don't know what is wrong, exactly. They do know that there was a build-up of non-infected fluid in his abdomen. They think that by opening him up, they can deduce and then fix whatever is wrong. I really hope it's something easy to fix. I know he is in capable hands, and all I can do now is hope and wait.

He was listless and lethargic all morning, so the vet wanted to see him again. Today, his new bloodwork showed a really elevated whitecell count, and other indicators of badness. It's possible that he ate something toxic, but she doesn't know if that's it so far. She's keeping him there for a little bit to give him fluid and stuff. Trying to determine what's wrong and what to do about it.

I hope, I hope my little doggie will be okay. Please, let him be okay!

I hope Darwin is okay. Last night, the scariest thing happened since he got loose in the National Monument in Oregon.

The vet said it was a seizure. His eyes were glassy, he was hunched over with his tail between his legs, unresponsive, and just... stood there. Since he hunches like that when he's about to throw up, I let him outside. He continued to just stand there in that position. It was freaky. So I moved him - had to grab him by the collar to haul - back into the house. His eyes were mostly tracking, but dilated, and he wasn't really looking around. His ears stayed flat against his head and didn't perk up or follow any noises. We made him lie on his side and he was just totally out of it. I decided to check his mouth and found his teeth clenched firmly shut - abnormal for him. We were really scared, he wasn't even responding to him name or anything.

I called the vet's emergency line and they had the vet call me back right away. She told us to meet her at the clinic in 15 minutes. As I was describing the symptoms to her over the phone, Darwin's eyes started to look better; his eyebrows were moving and he was watching me talk on the phone. Then when Josie got her coat, his picked his neck up to look. When I got my coat, he jumped up and got excited, like he normally does when he thinks he's going out.

He was normal all through the vet visit, though nervous (I think the doctor's large husband intimidated him, though he was very nice and gentle). She found his heart rate to be really high, even for Darwin - 180 instead of 100. His temp was normal. She wondered if there was any way he could have eaten some medicine or something. Josie uses Singulair for her asthma, and that seemed like the only possible thing it could be, if it was a toxin. But, she said it might have just been a one-time seizure, or even the on-set of something more, and that we'd need to watch him.

The vet put his bloodwork through in the clinic this morning, instead of sending it off and making us wait - she is an awesome vet. She called me and said it was basically totally normal. I should just watch him and call her if anything else happens. I hope he's okay. I love him so much.

The problem is that she gave him a beta blocker last night to make his heart rate fall and he has been sluggish and weird all night and into the morning. I am presuming it's from the drug, and not from the seizure. He did some abnormal things because of it, like pacing during a lot of the night and coming into the bedroom - which he only does if he's scared of thunder or something. He also lay down outside this morning, in the garden. Mr. Prissy Pants does NOT like getting dirty, and almost never even sits on grass; never dirt. So, I guess he's exhausted and confused and doesn't know what to do. It's worrying, but I am hoping it will wear off soon. He still seems like he wants to go for a walk, at least a little, but he is not bothering with dog biscuits or anything. I will try walking him in a little while.

I hope he is okay.