W.H. cont'd...

We went out to dinner, and toasted to Dunc's life with champagne. When we got back to the room, we spent all our time loving on Duncan...
but he was doing the same thing he'd been doing at home ~ circling the room, restless, and running almost head on to walls, corners, etc...

Then he had a seizure ~ a minor one, so I only gave him a 1mg. Valium dose... Then, he had a second one ~ another minimal dose of Valium...

But when he was fully alert afterwards, he gave us 'that' look... I was crying, as was Jim, and I said ~ "I think he's telling us it is time." And Jim agreed.

We called the vet hosp.; I told the doc on call a brief history, and that it was time. They were SO sweet!

We took him in, and they took us to their quiet room. They'd pulled up his chart, so they knew exactly what was going on.

We held onto Dunc and told him how much we loved him, and how proud we were of him for putting up such a good fight for so long. We told him what a good dog he was, and how lucky we felt that he had found us. We told him again how much we loved him...

...and then we let him go to the Rainbow Bridge.

He left us cuddled up in my lap, with Jimbo scratching under his ears, which was his special joy.



I cannot say enough about how kind the 3 staff members we dealt with that night were... they gave us all the time we needed, and more. Though we had never met them before, they immediately 'got' how special Duncan was. Dr. K assured us that they would make a cast of Dunc's paw, and they made signing all the paperwork as painless as possible.

Needless to say, it was a VERY long ride home the next day. And it's been a very rough time since...

We got a wonderful card a few days later from the vet hospital; almost everyone who had had anything to with Dunc signed it, and had written a note about how wonderful Duncan was. It was amazing to hear how much he had touched so many of them...
With this card, we also got a coaster sized cast with his paw print ~ many tears on receiving this!!!

Enough for tonight... more tomorrow...