emo day

i woke up this morning to get ready for work when my mom told my our dog, cosmo, isn't doing well. my dad took him out to go to the bathroom this morning and he kind of hobbled down the stairs slowly. then when it was time to go back up, he wouldn't do it. then he wasn't even able to walk. it was weird because he was perfectly fine the night before. i called in to work and said i wasn't coming in (last time we had to put a dog to sleep, i didn't get to say goodbye and i wasn't about to let that happen again). so we took him to the vet around 10am. 2 hours later they call and say they are going to give him x-rays around 1:30 and they'd call us as soon as he was done and they had the results, somewhere before 3. 3 rolled around and nothing so my mom and i decided to just go in. he was still in the x-ray room when we got there. because he is such a big dog, they had to give him 2 doses of sedation meds. finally the doctor came out and said he has 2 inflamed vertabrae along his spine and he'll need a shot of cortizone and then we'll have to give him some meds too.

bottom line: he'll be walking in probably a few days but no stairs.
problem: he has to go downstairs to go to the bathroom.
solution: we are going to buy some fake grass or something and put it on our upstairs patio and train him to go on that.


thanks for those who were praying.
it was a long day for us, filled with many, many tears.
including those of joy.



ps - the reason we were so sad was because he is 9 years old and if whatever was wrong with him required surgery, we wouldn't do it. it would be too expensive and as morbid as this is, who knows how much longer he will actually be around so really, there's no point.


so yay! i still have a dog!
and he's a beauty.