by Bernie King

Created on: February 03, 2009   Last Updated: February 21, 2009

Probably the two most difficult decisions in my life were deciding when to take my two dogs that I had to the vet to have them euthanized .

My first dog was a female black lab mix and her name was Diva. She lived to be fourteen. She started getting sick when she was about 12 years old and developed tumors on her chest, neck and inside of her legs. It progressively got worse and so I took her to the vet. He said he was sure it was cancer. I was told by the vet that cancer is prevalent in black labs.

He said he could take biopsies and have them tested to see if they were malignant. I elected not to have that done. It was expensive and I also considered her age at the time. The vet took x-rays that revealed grayish areas in different parts of her body. After awhile the vet prescribed methotrexate for Diva which is the same medicine given to people for rheumatoid arthritis. This was to reduce the inflammation and pain.

Then during the months to come Diva started losing control of her bowels and started defecating every where. I could tell it was stressing her out big time because after defecating she would hide and not look at me and when she did she would look at me as if to be telling me "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to and I can't help it."

On the last morning of her life, after enduring this ordeal for maybe two months, I opened her mouth to put the pill in her throat and she quickly snapped her jaw shut, almost catching my thumb in her still strong but tired jaws. She looked at me in her glazed over eyes as if to say "ok, I've had enough." I quickly called the vet's office and told them it was "time" for Diva and took her to the animal hospital where she was put to sleep finally ending her months of misery and pain. I cried a lot during that day, missing my companion and my "patient" very much. It took awhile for me to get over Diva. I didn't think I ever wanted to get another dog.

About two years later I was looking in a pet store and this cute and frisky female black lab was running around and came right to me. She was very playful. I could tell she wasn't a full blooded black lab. It didn't matter and I didn't waste any time buying her and taking her home. As she got older I noticed her back legs were longer than her front legs. She looked like a car that had the rear raised or "jack" up like people used to do with their old classic cars.

We couldn't think of a name so my daughter named her Abigail Danielle. When she was about seven years old she tore a tendon

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