November 29th was a sad, sad day.

Yesterday Tim's family's lab, Abby, had to be put to sleep. Her age has always been an area of debate so I'm going to say she was around 12 or 13. She has been acting strange for the past couple of months started by an incident of what seemed like vertigo. In other words, she couldn't balance and was walking in zig zagged lines with her head tilted to the side (perhaps what a drunk dog would look like). Tim's parents were told this was a temporary condition common in most older dogs.

Then lately she started walking in circles randomly and panting constantly. She was doing this a few weeks ago when I visited. It didn't stop and actually got worse. This week they started to have a hard time finding her outside. She would go behind bushes to hide...Tim's parents said it was almost as if she were trying to find a place to die. She also started to not eat anything, which, if you knew Abby, you would be alarmed simply by this fact. That dog could eat and could fake that she hadn't eaten so you would feed her again. Tim said he would be shocked to learn that she ever missed a meal.... Point: she loved food and the fact that she stopped eating was a sure sign of something amiss.

So Tim's parents took her back to the vet on Monday and the doctor said that her symptoms were that of a brain tumor. The panting, they said, is a mechanism for coping with pain. So, to spare her the severe pain of dying on her own (which the vet said would probably be within 3 months, but probably sooner) Tim's parents made the difficult decision so put her to sleep. Now she is in a better place...free of pain and at peace. I hope that somehow animals know how much they are loved and that they are never truly forgotten. Each one is so unique. Abby, I know, was loved deeply by Tim, Aaron, Ryan, Mark, and Beth. And even by me, whose time with her was short...but so precious.