Miss You Max

Today is a really tough day. We had to say goodbye to Max this morning :( If you haven't heard, we found out just three weeks ago that Max had bone cancer. He was limping around on his front leg for a while and when the vet did an x-ray, they determined that it was bone cancer. Apparently it is a pretty aggressive form of cancer in dogs and there are several options to treat them for pain management, but there isn't really a cure. We spoke with a surgeon and an oncologist and decided to try radiation. Max went in for his treatments last week, and we were hopeful that it would help relieve the pain, at least for a few months. Unfortunately, there wasn't any improvement. It actually seemed to get worse. We had to make the difficult decision this week to say goodbye.

Max has been such an important part of our lives. We got him after we had only been married about 5 months, and he really turned us from a couple into a family and he also turned our house into a home. There were so many times that we wondered, "What would we do if we didn't have Max?" Thanks to Max we got to enjoy our neighborhood even more and were able to meet so many neighbors. (When you have a dog that big, people tend to stop and talk ;) ) He was always a wonderful dog, and was excellent with The P. His patient, mellow personality was perfect for a toddler. I know you have to be careful with pets and babies, but I was never afraid to leave them in a room together. Once she started walking, The P love to go over and pet Max, and sit right between his front paws. One of her first signs was "dog", and one of her first words was "woof". I am glad we have so many pictures of them together, because it is really sad to think that she is probably too young to remember him.

We all went to the vet together this morning, and The P fed Max about 30 treats while they were getting ready for the procedures. He was eating them just as fast as she could hand them out. This is a really tough time, but we will always have wonderful memories of Max...

We love you Max! October 9, 2002 - March 20, 2008

(I want to put together a slide show of pictures of Max, but I am still working on it.)