What Color Is Tuesday?

It’s pretty sad, but most likely our little beagle has a cancerous tumor on her belly.  While we won’t know for sure unless we send off a biopsy to a pathology lab, the vet said it is most likely a squamous cell carcinoma or a hemangiosarcoma.  In both cases, the best treatment is surgical removal of the tumor.  Since she also has pretty severe tooth decay, the vet recommends that we put Lucy completely under anesthesia, give her IV fluids and do both her teeth cleaning and tumor removal.  Another option would be to just locally anesthetize the area and remove the tumor.

I hate having to make the call on a pet.  After all, she’s a member of the family but she is just an animal.  I’ve always said that owners that spends thousands of dollars on treatments like chemotherapy or radiation are a little bit loony, but it’s harder to say that when your own pet is nearing the end.  We know that Lucy has lived a long life and she’s right at the average lifespan for her breed.  And yet, she’s still eating, drinking, playing and being … well, … being Lucy.

So, what do you say?  How far do you go for the family pet?  Can you put a price tag on the companionship from your puppies? $75, $350, or thousands of $$$?

We planned on heading out to Granbury this morning but due to a new “growth” on our beagle’s belly, we’re postponing for one extra day.  However, when we leave still kind of depends on what we learn at the vet.  Lucy Lou, our 12-year-old AKC registered beagle, has developed a handful of small lumps on her body.  We’ve counted 4 now, but one of them we noticed had turned red and proceeded to double in size over a couple of days.  It seems to have slowed its growth but we still need to check it out.  We first noticed this one while in Canadian for Christmas a few days ago.

We’re hoping for the best.  At this point, we all realize that she’s a pretty old dog but until now, we’ve always thought of her as the more healthy and more spry of our two dogs.  Cramer, who is also 12, has steadily lost more and more of his vision over the last year.  It was discovered in 2009 that his tear-ducts were no longer working as they should.  Dry eye is not uncommon among old Dachshunds, but his case was deteriorated to where he’s lost almost all sight.  He navigates our house quite well, but you really notice his difficulty when we visit other places, like last week in Canadian.

Lucy Lou:

Cramer:

Since Emily’s first Christmas, we’ve been carrying on a tradition in our family in which we purchase one new Christmas ornament for each of our kids each year.  I’ve certainly lost track of who got what and when, but thankfully we’ve labeled each ornament and kept them in good shape over the years.  However, the ultimate result of this tradition is a very sentimental but horrendously hodge podge Christmas tree.

This year we tried something new.  We bought a separate 3’ tree for each kid.  They’ve now accumulated enough ornaments of their own plus a few oldies-but-goodies from Christmas-past and they can decorate their own trees.  Plus, with the dormers on our second floor, where the boys have their room, we can put them in windows and add to our external illumination.

(See them up on the second floor)

The final benefit and probably the main goal was that we were able to decorate our tree with a more uniform style.

Here are the kiddos trees:

Zach’s Tree	Tim’s Tree	Emily’s Tree (with a photo bomb by Zach)