Who knows what the future brings. I certainly didn't imagine my life would unfold the way it has, and I think most people are conscious of the idea that no matter how much you plan things change. But when I thought about my future there was always one certain thing: For the next many years I would have my dog Britta. You know your dog won't be around for even a quarter of your life, and so after a long natural lifespan you expect the grey hairs, the geriatric care and the painful decision of when to let go. 

And this is what I expected, until one day the world spun out of control and landed upside down. The world's most beautiful and perfect dog (this is fact) is going to leave me sooner than I ever expected. Here is a background on the five days that changed my world. 

Day One: The Day I Could Have Lost Her
    Britta had been annoying me for weeks. She would get me up 2-4 times in the middle of the night to eat snow. She refused dry kibble, then canned, and finally snubbed  frozen dog food which has to be heated or left out for an hour before feeding. It was time to get her into the vet. What I remember first was the color of her gum tissue... it was the scariest white color I had ever seen. The skin of her ear looked like a jaundiced newborn baby. Within what felt like 8 minutes, she had been diagnosed with IMHA, it was determined that she would need a blood transfusion, and an x-ray taken to see anything internally. Stopping for a second: Your dog needs a match from the blood bank and is going to have a transfusion. OK, moving on from that strange concept. An ultrasound was needed because the x-ray showed either internal bleeding or a mass. The ultrasound showed it was a mass on her spleen. Surgical removal of the spleen and a huge mass probably similar to this picture. And after all this, we're still alive.

Day Two: Worth Calling at 2:30 in the Morning
    After that kind of day the dog doesn't get to go home. Britta spent the night at an emergency vet clinic. I love my dog, but I never thought I'd be the person calling the vet at 2:30 in the morning to make sure she's alright. Britta ate food during the night, and this gave me hope for her future. In the morning she had to be shuttled back to the regular vet. The drive in the morning she was like a limp doll on my lap. When I picked her up she was walking around and had eaten again. What she had accomplished seemed amazing.

Days Three through Four: Day by Day
    Britta was brought to the vet every day to test her PCV levels. To give some perspective, at Day 1 she was at a dangerously low 8%. I read somewhere that dogs usually collapse in the low teens. After surgery she climbed up to the 20s and now rests between 30-32%. Unfortunately, normal is in the 37-55% range. This is still day by day.

Day Five: Day of Shock
    The results of the mass came back. Was it just a benign tumor or was it a cancerous growth? Either of those would have had a better prognosis. Britta has hemangiosarcoma. It is cancer of the blood, which means it has the ability to travel throughout the body easily. This type of cancer is unresponsive to treatments like chemotherapy. If Britta becomes a statistic, she has only 2-3 months to live.

The hardest part of swallowing this news is that besides healing from the surgery Britta is back to her old self. Yesterday she hid a bone, unburied the bone, and ate the bone in a three minute uninterrupted period. She must have been in a hurry to get it all done.

The adoption picture that won my heart

Graduating from Kindergarten

Classic Britta pose which won her an insulting nickname

Britta's choice of pillow while camping