She's 23 now and handling it with a beautiful matureness, but I could sense the panic of an eight year old in her voice when my daughter called me this morning.
She tried to shrug it off as one of the little twists of darkness life deals from time to time.
But, dammit. Not again.
When she was eight, she found an oddness in her beloved dog's eye. I captured that story, about cancer and putting a dog to sleep, here. That event marked her. She has ever since been fixated on black labs and the first thing she did when she moved into her own place was adopt a black puppy she swore would grow up to be a lab. Pringles is actually a border collie mix, rather than a lab. But he was her companion through many lonely nights at college, living alone for the first time in her life.
And when she discovered a very large tumor on Pringles this morning ... it was the eight year old child and her black lab all over again.
I just now got an update: The tumor is benign, easily operable, and nothing to worry about. Pringles, with love and care, will live to a ripe and energetic old age.
We can only hope.
Oh, good! I've had too many sad dog posts lately...
A happy ending. I breathed easier when I read that. :-)
I hope this has a happy ending; dealing with death is one of the lessons our pets offer us, often at a very young age. I had a poem about that last week on my Poetry Thursday.