Our Little Guy

I think I can bring myself to talk about this now...

Yesterday was dreadful... the day before was dreadful too. We've known for a while that Tootsie was not himself... about a month ago Tootsie's breath began to stink... badly... and so I had a look in his mouth and discovered that his teeth were getting really bad. He needed work done on them before too long. I started to save money since usually it costs about $600.00 to get a dogs teeth cleaned. About two weeks later I had a look at his teeth again and I discovered that the gums were starting to rot. That was way faster than we expected. I started saving faster. Then he went off his food so I bought canned food thinking that his teeth were really bothering him and he loved it... for a few days...

In addition to all of this, Tootsie started to have violent shaking about 6 or 8 months ago and we just put it down to the fact that he was cold and so we let his fur grow out a little longer after all it was coming on for fall after a very hot summer.

Little did we know that something very bad was happening. Inside his wee body things were starting to get screwed up. It was because his Adrenal glans were no longer producing the hormones that made his little body function correctly.  It's called Addison's disease... over the weekend it was clear to us that Tootsie was not feeling well. We thought that it was because he had taken a flying leap off Daughter #2's bed and had hurt his back again... he has been on medication for jumping and hurting his back before. Saturday he was very listless... Sunday he stopped eating and Sunday night he stopped moving around much and whined every time he moved. We called the vet first thing on Monday. By Monday afternoon we knew the worst.... that there was not a whole lot that the vet could do and his chances of bringing Tootsie back from the brink was very slim indeed. So we made the horrible decision to end his pain which he was so very obviously in... a tough decision but one that had to be made.

We miss him terribly because he always followed us around and went where ever we went.

Two dogs in less than a year... it has been a hard year indeed. And we will keep our dear little friend in our hearts...