Saffron

I am so very sorry. What a beautiful tribute to Penny.

Love to you and Penny. Holding you in the Light.

Go Soul! And hugs to you both!

I am so sorry. We are holding you and Stormy in our thoughts and in the light. Every day is indeed a precious gift.

Pain meds are good, but we are also holding you in the Light. All the best,

We are holding you and Penny firmly in our thoughts. You will make the right decision at the right time. Much love and gentle kisses for Penny,

I'm so glad Penny is home and ate a burger. Enjoy your time with her. She will feel very loved at home. I wish I could have brought Catwalk home for those last few hours, but I knew that she was in pain and not have been able to enjoy a burger. My thoughts are with you at this terrible time. You are the only person who can decide when to set her free from pain. Such an awful decision.

Positive thoughts continuing from here for you and Soul. Hang in there!

I'm glad Soul is feeling better. On the SQ fluids -- I'm not sure. We have had a lot of experience with SQ fluids, but they all absorbed in 24 hours with no problems even though the lump, camel hump, "manboob" went down through gravity to the armpit/chest area was a little scary at first. Soul is getting wonderful care. Hope you both get a good night's sleep and more good news soon.

The bloodwork sounds hopeful. Let us hope that the news on the ultrasound is good too, whenever it happens! Soul will be happy to get home. Gentle cuddles for him from here. We are thinking of you both.

I am so sorry. Soul is in the best place to receive care but you must be hurting so badly. Hope the consult with OSU goes well and that he is home soon.

We are holding you in our thoughts here. Hoping that Tufts can get a handle on this one!

I just saw this. How is Stanley feeling this evening, Anne-Marie? I hope all better. Yes, temps are best taken rectally. Pilgrim lets out the GSOD at the very approach of a rectal thermometer, silly girl! I also usually check that gums are nice and pink, although sticky gums usually mean they are dehydrated.

I really don't want to scare you unnescessarily, but if she is not better today, I'd advise doing bloodwork and urinanalysis with your vet. Here is hoping it is just a tummy upset. Many greys have those and survive happily. I'm over-reacting because we just lost my Catwalk to visceral hemangiosarcoma. Her first symptom was rapid weight loss. I hope that this is not true for you. Please cover the bases, Gillian

Catwalk has left us and we are grieving. This wonderful dog bounced into our lives on May 17, 2003. She was the first grey we interviewed on that day that treated Boucca the geriatric JRT as a dog not a potential snack. Boucca approved Catwalk, so she came home with us. My first grey. She introduced us to many good friends in the greyhound community, and our love for her encouraged us to adopt two more wonderful greys who are comforting us now. Catwalk had just been cleared for adoption after 4 months crate rest at GAS recovering from a pelvic fracture incurred in a training run. Imagine my horror when the first thing she did after arriving at her forever home was to take a flying leap onto the kitchen table. How to get her down without jarring her newly healed pelvis? Oh my. She was such a curious energetic 2 year old. She was a sociable, outgoing and supremely intelligent grey. My houdini dog. She could open crates, doors and drawers, was an inveterate counter-surfer, could work the microwave (when it pings there is food in there), and thought it her duty to investigate visiting ladies' purses for contraband. Her loving and outgoing personality and love of children made her a wonderful Therapy Dog. She will be missed by so many. I had forgotten how many lives she touched until the condolences came pouring in this week. Catwalk lived to love and to share her love. She had too short a life. Visceral hemangiosarcoma is indeed the silent killer, so we are just happy that she did not have to suffer long. Gillian and Chris and Pilgrim and Murphy the greys

Thank you everyone. I'll post a thread in Remembrance soon. Catwalk was my first grey, and was my *star* Therapy Dog. She will be so missed by us and her many "clients." Catwalk just lived to share love. And special thanks to Anne-Marie for posting Catwalk's picture for me. Here she is again showing off a brand new 2Hounds collar: P's Catwalk. 2/14/2001 -- 10/17/2008 Gillian, Chris, Pilgrim and Murphy.

Everyone, We heard last night just after my last post. Hemangeosarcoma. We did not get much sleep last night and have made our decision with many tears. Catwalk was kept comfortable overnight, and we are leaving for Tufts soon to say goodbye. Thank you all. Gillian

Again, thanks to all. I wish it were better news. Catwalk is at Tufts over-night and possibly longer. I was not too surprised because from the look of her yesterday night and this am she just can't be an out patient any longer. She is getting worse by the day. At least Tufts can put her on a IV and manage her pain. Yep, she is now in serious pain but was gakking up the tramadol pronto. Not good, because I had to try to keep her hydrated. She had chest Xrays today, clotting counts, and will have an ultrasound also tomorrow. And a slew of other aspirations (depending on the clotting count) and tests, including for Lepto. Pancreatitis, gall bladder issues, cancer, Lepto, foreign object . . . who knows right now? Even though I had anticipated that she would probably need to be hospitalized, and thought I had the British stiff upper lip firmly in place, I wept all over the Tufts vet. Sweet lady. She gave me a hug and told me that dogs can recover from pancreatitis, but I have a very bad feeling about this. Let us hope my instincts are wrong. I'm supposed to get an update from Tufts tomorrow morning. I'll keep you posted. And thank you so much for caring! It means so much! Gillian.

Again, many thanks all. Another combined response to GT Pat, I'll PM you in a moment, but thanks so much for your offer of help. I think we were posting simultaneously. I'm sure you agree that our mutual vets are wonderful. No, Soulsmom, no ultrasound yet. Almost certainly tomorrow at Tufts. Thanks to all, Gillian

Thanks all, for all your support. I apologise for not doing individual responses, but I'm going to have to be quick because I need to give Catwalk some serious loving. I'm looking at a horribly sick skeletal dog here. So fast. From healthy to really sick in <10 days. I will have to check out Monty's thread, and my best wishes for him, if my response gets lost in the shuffle there. The horrid thing with this is that the onset was so *nothing much.* She might have lost a couple off lbs over the summer, but we all are more active and drop a few pounds over the summer. We've all had a dog gak up stuff sometimes haven't we? We've all had the odd soft poop? She had no explosive diarrhea or vomiting. Just a little upset tummy, and a bit off her food. I'm a person who rushes to the vet when in doubt. I did that when she started melting weight off in 4 days after a *minor8 tummy upset. Many thanks for the heartfelt prayers, but nope, nope and nope. Catwalk was the picture of health. On no meds. She had one day of diarrhea on October 4, but other than that her poop has been normal. She has vomited maybe 5-6 times total over 10 days. With pancreatitis (and she was not a typical presentation but that was what the bloodwork said) the standard treatment is fasting to rest the digestive tract and then gentle reintroduction of low fat food. Since October 8, on one day she has been ravenously hungry, the next refusing food. Her poops have been normal since the 4th. I've been hand feeding tiny amounts of low fat food hourly to lessen the chance of vomiting. Hard to do when your hound is shrinking before your eyes. I'm anticipating the worst here, but I know Catwalk's regular vets have gone above and beyond for her. They came in over the holiday w/e just to give her fluids and spare us the E-vet costs. Sometimes bad things happen to good dogs, conscientious owners and excellent vets. Please continue positive thoughts for my beloved Catwalk. She is so very sick. Thanks again, Gillian

We have an appointment at Tufts tomorrow to try to get to the bottom of what is going on with my Catwalk, and Dr Couto is reviewing all her records this afternoon also. It doesn't look too good. Our regular vet has already warned me that it still could be the pancreatitis we were treating but wasn't getting better, some auto-immune disease attacking her organs or, of course, cancer, or something else. We could use some healing thoughts here. I haven't posted about this before, because it *seemed* minor at first, and I expected nearly everyone to be having a wonderful time at Dewey anyway. Some may remember me from my posts under my old screen name -- 2whitegreys. I'm Gillian in Massachussets with Catwalk, Pilgrim and Murphy P, usually posting about suspicious lumps and Therapy Dog activities. I'll post an update here tomorrow pm, but I'm not sure how often I'll be able to get back to this thread before then. I've stuck a brief description I wrote out of what has been going on below in case anyone finds it helpful. I'm a wreck, and writing it out helped stop me bawling my eyes out. Well temporarily, at least. Many thanks in advance, Gillian. Two weeks ago -- Catwalk apparently a happy healthy 7 year old greyhound. October 4th, had what seemed like a minor tummy upset (vomited twice and some minor diarrhea), went off food temporarily, home cooked chicken and rice the next day, no big deal. Eating normal food Monday, a bit picky but eating. But rapid (really rapid) weight loss. About 8lbs melting off in 4-5 days. Last Wednesday -- our vet ran all the usual blood/urine tests including the specific pancreatitis screen. FYI, my vets office is fantastic and very knowledgable about greyhounds. Diagnosis -- mild pancreatitis of unknown cause. She is not high risk, and had not got into anything greasy, is on decent food, is not obese, etc, but that is what it looked like. So we treat for pancreatitis. Friday she vomited again twice and has had sub Q fluids every day since to stop her from dehydrating, even though the vomiting stopped. Today -- Running the blood and urine tests again yesterday shows she is getting worse not better, thus the consultations. I don't have the numbers in front of me yet, but let's just say that the results are dramatically worse than last week. Looks like her liver and kidneys are now compromised too.

I think you would have very different results if this poll were on Everything Else Greyhound. When I looked at the poll results 100% had experience of cancer. That seems really scary, and I don't think that is necessarily representative. Those of us with sick greys come here. Those with healthy greys avoid H & M understandably. Only one of my 3 has had cancer and she is the youngest. Pilgrim had nerve sheath sarcoma very near her spine at age 4. 2 surgeries (the second quite radical) got clean margins. She has had a couple of other suspicious lumps in the area removed, but she is still with us at age 6. Scarred up, but with us. Cancer free, and pretty darn healthy today! My other two have not had cancer at ages 7 and 10 respectively. I voted, but want to warn you and everyone else that this poll is probably not representative of the usual grey profile on cancer.

Ouch! A UTI! I'm probably way to late ... but yes the morning sample is best. I use a clean (dog urine only) plastic ladle to catch the girl's. Wait for them to squat and shove the ladle under. I then transfer to a clean (read just out of the dishwasher) screwtop jar if I don't have the vet-provided container at hand. Note the exact time, and tell the vet whether you have refrigerated the sample or not. Hope your pupper is OK.

. They also all know that in the back of *my* Camry (maximum dog transport is 2 only) that they must be harnessed and belted in. Thanks, your information was really helpful! You are very welcome! I'm sorry if I sounded obnoxiously preachy, but a few years ago a friend of mine was killed in a low speed (40MPH) collision because her 40lb mix breed was unsecured. He hit her head flying forward and, yes, he died too. Lord only knows what happens in high speed collisions

We use harnesses. Always. Although, depending on the dog, you may need to do some training before they are comfortable with it. One of you might want to sit with the grey at first as you seldom drive. My Murphy took a long time to get used to the harness but, as he wanted to help steer, it was an absolute necessity to get him used to being secured in the back. Quite aside from the escape risk, an unsecured dog can be a serious risk to the driver's concentration, and in a collision can become a flying missile. A collision will almost certainly kill an unsecured dog, and will probably take you out too. Our greymobile is a Subaru Forester and Murphy and Catwalk travel in the back with the harnesses attached to the luggage tie downs. Pilgrim is in the back seat attached to the seat belt. I'm thinking of getting one of those metal barrier things to stop the back riders from flying forward because I don't quite trust the luggage ties. They also all know that in the back of *my* Camry (maximum dog transport is 2 only) that they must be harnessed and belted in. As someone else said, I don't think it is a good idea to use a leash and martingale. Choking and neck breaking . . .