by Becky
At first we didn't plan on keeping this pup. He just wasn't very playful and we liked his litter mate. My uncle's Boxer had pups and we had first choice so it was hard. For some reason we ended up keeping Bull at the last minute. I wasn't sure why then but I know now. I've never met a more intuitive, caring animal. Always there with those big brown eyes, even when I was sad it was hard to be with his silly antics. He just turned five and we noticed a lump on his back right paw. Being a nurse of course cancer popped in my head but that couldn't happen to our Bull...he was young yet. We brought him to the vet a couple days later and my worst fears were confirmed! Osteosarcoma. The vet told me he had three months to live with or without amputation, maybe three to six months with chemotherapy. Of course my first instinct was she's crazy..let's get a second opinion. Sure enough it was cancer. What do we do now? Bull kind of decided on his own. he was so happy and playful except when he jumped on that back leg. What a tortuous decision to make...do we amputate and put him through that for such little time or let him go? We ended up doing the amputation after many sleepless nights. To this day I don;t regret it. He was such a fighter. He was walking the day of his surgery!! Here we were afraid he might not walk, etc, etc,.I was so proud of him. I was in charge of his post op care. Every day he surprised me with his progress. He had so much trust in me he never winced at all anytime I had to clean his wound. He was running approximately two weeks later. I can never put in words how proud I was of my baby boy. He was not going to be down for long. Well he ended up doing well. I think it was around December or early January of this year when we noticed he had developed this cough. We took him to the vet to discover the cancer had spread to his lungs. Great, not much longer to have him. The last days were sad, he coughed a lot and i guess everyone knew it was time. We had him put to sleep May4, 2002. He had his amputation July10,2001. We had more months with him than we were given. I am so thankful for that but it still hurts so much. We lost a beautiful, sensitive,and inspiring dog that day.
Dedicated to Bull: February20,1996 to May4,2002 with love.