Worries About My Yellow Dog

One of the smartest things my husband and I ever did several years ago to put an end to the inevitable resentment about doing repeated crappy jobs was to just divide them up. I got unloading the dishwasher and he got taking out the trash. I got buying dogfood and he got changing lightbulbs. I got taking the yellow dog to the vet and he got the older black dog. Whereas everything up to the dogs was negotiated, we actually flipped a coin for the dogs, thinking that the black dog would be the bigger burden since he is getting really old. We probably would have extended this to our children, if they had still needed to be taken to the pediatrician’s office. You are saying, "These people are Type-A anal retentive idiots!" Well, maybe. But the system has worked miraculously. We no longer argue over the small things.

I definitely got the lucky toss on the dogs, because Jake, the yellow dog, has been extremely healthy. Our son Dan found Jake on the Internet 7 years ago, advertized as an "Oops litter", the product of two champions from different breeds (golden retriever and black lab) who just couldn’t resist. From the minute we saw him, we knew he was the one for us. He was practically free since he didn’t come with papers. But then, that wasn’t why we were buying him. Instead, we wanted a second dog to wake up the first, a black lab named Dylan, who was 5 years old at that time and who had been practically comatose since birth. Well, wake him up Jake did. Jake has never lacked for spunk or the desire to FETCH-FETCH-FETCH, ad nauseum.

Unfortunately it is the as nauseum that is now the problem. He has always been a dog to throw up easily and in that charming canine habit, he just proceeds to eat it again. But lately it has become a daily habit, sometimes even twice a day. My retired husband is often the one who is home and so he gets to clean it up. He finally reached his limit of tolerance and made a daytime appointment for Jake, letting me know that I owe him a Dylan visit. Fair enough.

I fully expected the vet to tell him to just try a different food for Jake. But instead she took a stool sample (I won’t describe exactly how) and biopsied a suspicious lump. When I heard about the latter, I started to feel really guilty for not having taken him in sooner, although this latest throw-up frenzy just started a few weeks ago.

Nevertheless I am extremely worried about the outcome of this problem. I have heard that large dogs don’t live as long as small dogs. Fully expecting Dylan (now 12) to be the first to go, I am totally surprised that it could possibly be Jake. I have already started to think about when I would choose to ease his life, knowing that I couldn’t bear to let him suffer. At the same time, I wouldn’t try to prolong his life if I wasn’t sure he could fully recover. What a dilemma. These dogs are like family. I keep hoping they will both live forever.