August 28, 2009 - Poor Chippy

This blog started out with a photo of Chip on Cape Cod. Our elderly 14 year-old Dalmatian had a good life, but we could see him going downhill. He would slip on the wood floors and couldn’t get up, stairs were increasingly difficult and he suffered from cataracts, doggie dementia and general old-age maladies. That night sometime after dinner, he started the barfy thing he sometimes did. I took him outside and he just didn’t look right. My wife was on the phone, but I had her come right down. She took one look at it immediately suspected it was torsion. This is a life threatening situation and we immediately took him to Tufts Veterinary Clinic.

It was torsion. They made him comfortable and gave us the details should we elect surgery but, if he made it through the surgery, the recovery would be long and difficult. It didn’t seem right for him to have to suffer. We knew his time was coming, but this was rather sudden. The next day we looked at the photo that I posted on the first blog and realized just how far downhill he had come in three months. That helped us confirm that we made the right decision.

This is Chip in his younger days. If you look into his eyes, you might see a reflection of the dog biscuit I’m holding.