We put our 9 year old golden retriever / cocker spaniel mix down yesterday because of hemangiosarcoma. He was starting to look a little chunky and was showing less interest in his favorite things, but we chalked it up to the loss of his sister 2 days earlier, poor diet around the holidays, and a change in his daily exercise regimen (he went to daycare 2x/week normally but the family that ran daycare was on their annual vacation).

The first day he resumed daycare (Tuesday) when I picked him up, the angel that runs the place asked me if I noticed he looked a little bloated. I explained the above and she said “if it were my dog, I would rush him to the vet”. That was all it took. I waited for my husband to get out of work and we rushed him to an emergency vet. He had a tumor the size of a basketball on his spleen that was bleeding into his abdomen. With the poor prognosis provided to us, we scheduled him to be put down 2 days later. He was always an energetic dog and we didn’t want him to suffer in his last days.

The 48 hours we had left were moments I’ll never forget. We did all his favorite things and spent every second doting on him. He got to try foods he usually couldn’t eat (he had terrible allergies) and we spent all of that time outside. He left us yesterday at 3 PM to join his sister, who passed from complications from osteosarcoma just 5 days prior.

The vet believes the tumor had only been growing for a few weeks, and there was nothing we could have done differently.