TheGuyWithTheTacoma
Well-Known Member
I love dogs. Always have. Always will!
My first dog was a Black Labrador Retriever named Molly. I was just a few months shy of my sixth birthday when I saw her for the first time. My parents bought her from an Amish farmer for like $280. She was very friendly and loved all people, but generally did not get along with other dogs. We still loved her and were devastated when we had to put her to sleep, but it was for the best. Molly lived to be 15 years old! This is highly unusual for a Labrador.
It was almost nine years before my parents got another dog, and this time we adopted. We went to one of those adoption events at a pet store in September 2018, and immediately fell in love with a white Corgi/Labrador mix named Mandy. We ended up keeping the name the rescue agency had given her. For the first month, everything seemed fine, but then we realized she was drinking excessively. Tests run by the same vet we took Molly to for the last four years of her life revealed kidney issues, but she didn't have the equipment to get to the bottom of it. My parents took Mandy to a specialist and an ultrasound revealed that she had Congenital Renal Dysplasia. She had been born with deformed kidneys, and they were only operating at 40% capacity. Her shortened lifespan was expected to be anywhere from a year to five years depending on a number of factors. We put her on low-protein prescription dog food which did wonders, and she did great for six months or so. In April or May 2019, she started to sleep a lot and slow down quite a bit. At first I thought it was adorable that she always wanted to sleep under my desk, but I started to realize this was not normal behavior. In the last month or so of her life, she became anemic, her appetite diminished, and her back leg muscles started to atrophy. She started licking the sidewalk because she thought she was getting some sort of nutrients from it. She also started chewing up the drywall for the same reason (it's November 2019 and we still haven't repaired this).
By the end of June 2019, we realized that two years old was totally unrealistic. We put her to sleep on the morning of July 1st, 2019. My parents had her cremated separately and we got her ashes back in a nice wooden box with her name on it.
The act of putting Mandy to sleep is not what upset us so much. Mandy was suffering and her quality of life had dwindled. Putting her to sleep was the most humane thing we could have done. The fact that we'd only had her for like ten months and she was barely a year old was what really hit hard. She did, however, probably have more fun in the ten months she was with us than many dogs have in their whole lives! Also, consider this; She was found in a box by the side of the road, along with her two siblings, in South Carolina. If someone else had adopted her, they might have given up way too early and and put her to sleep a lot sooner than we did. Mandy got to play with the neighbor's St. Bernard puppy just about every day of her life, and for the first four months or so that we had her, we took her to the "puppy social hour" at a local kennel.
June 30-July 9th, 2019 (est.)-July 1st, 2019
My first dog was a Black Labrador Retriever named Molly. I was just a few months shy of my sixth birthday when I saw her for the first time. My parents bought her from an Amish farmer for like $280. She was very friendly and loved all people, but generally did not get along with other dogs. We still loved her and were devastated when we had to put her to sleep, but it was for the best. Molly lived to be 15 years old! This is highly unusual for a Labrador.
It was almost nine years before my parents got another dog, and this time we adopted. We went to one of those adoption events at a pet store in September 2018, and immediately fell in love with a white Corgi/Labrador mix named Mandy. We ended up keeping the name the rescue agency had given her. For the first month, everything seemed fine, but then we realized she was drinking excessively. Tests run by the same vet we took Molly to for the last four years of her life revealed kidney issues, but she didn't have the equipment to get to the bottom of it. My parents took Mandy to a specialist and an ultrasound revealed that she had Congenital Renal Dysplasia. She had been born with deformed kidneys, and they were only operating at 40% capacity. Her shortened lifespan was expected to be anywhere from a year to five years depending on a number of factors. We put her on low-protein prescription dog food which did wonders, and she did great for six months or so. In April or May 2019, she started to sleep a lot and slow down quite a bit. At first I thought it was adorable that she always wanted to sleep under my desk, but I started to realize this was not normal behavior. In the last month or so of her life, she became anemic, her appetite diminished, and her back leg muscles started to atrophy. She started licking the sidewalk because she thought she was getting some sort of nutrients from it. She also started chewing up the drywall for the same reason (it's November 2019 and we still haven't repaired this).
By the end of June 2019, we realized that two years old was totally unrealistic. We put her to sleep on the morning of July 1st, 2019. My parents had her cremated separately and we got her ashes back in a nice wooden box with her name on it.
The act of putting Mandy to sleep is not what upset us so much. Mandy was suffering and her quality of life had dwindled. Putting her to sleep was the most humane thing we could have done. The fact that we'd only had her for like ten months and she was barely a year old was what really hit hard. She did, however, probably have more fun in the ten months she was with us than many dogs have in their whole lives! Also, consider this; She was found in a box by the side of the road, along with her two siblings, in South Carolina. If someone else had adopted her, they might have given up way too early and and put her to sleep a lot sooner than we did. Mandy got to play with the neighbor's St. Bernard puppy just about every day of her life, and for the first four months or so that we had her, we took her to the "puppy social hour" at a local kennel.
Mandy
