Wednesday, May 29, 2019

The Tale of Clayton

About 9 years ago The Hubby and I were given the opportunity to take this little guy into our lives, our hearts.  He belonged to a friend of ours at the cabin retreat place and as it turned out was also a neighbor in town.  Anyway, at the time she was traveling way too much for this young lad and he needed to have a more stable life.  When we would see Clayton we would jokingly say, "Rose, we're just going to take Clayton." He was the cutest and friendliest little guy and we loved him, everyone did.  
Then one day the phone call came where she asked us if we would like to have him.  Oh GOSH!  We thought and thought and decided we would make him a part of our world.  Clayton was a young, 3 year old puppy.  This photo is the day we said yes.

The next two photos are bringing him home and me trying to capture his picture.  I thought we had made a mistake.  He was manic and it scared me.  

 

Very, VERY quickly it was determined that we did indeed make the RIGHT decision.
This face... 


This personality... 

The love... 


Clayton has melted our hearts and we couldn't love him more.  

He so loves our granddaughter and any little child that comes through the door. 


He especially loves his daddy. 

...and me. 
...and occasionally he has overnight guests, Mondo the Wonder Dog, Snicklefritz's companion. 
Oh MY he loves Mondo. 



Clayton is a huge part of our life, even breaking bread with us on a nightly fashion. 


 Sadly, about 2 years ago things took a bad turn for little Clayton.  He developed a connective tissue tumor on his hip and another on his left front leg, the one that is short from birth.  
The hip one was successfully taken off.  It was baseball size!  

Then we went for the one on his leg.  The vet said he didn't know if he could get it all because there wasn't much fat or skin on his leg and the likelihood of it coming back was very high.  He was right because about a year after it was taken off it was back very quickly.  We again tried to take it off and that time around the surgery was so stressful on our little guy I didn't know if  we could stand it.  Poor baby cried and cried when we got home.  I was heartbroken for him.  
The second surgery for the leg was just in September and about 3 months ago that dang thing was back with a vengeance.  At the time The Hubby took him back to the vet for a consultation and he said that if it ruptured (abscessed) to bring him back and they would try to cut down some but short of amputation, there was really not much chance of getting rid of the thing.  In the past month that mass started growing at a rapid speed and we made an appointment to get him in but had to wait two weeks as our vet was booked.  Well, this past Memorial Day weekend, it abscessed!  BLECH!  It was a horrible weekend with a trip back to town at 2 am to the emergency vet and yesterday we were told by our vet that amputation was our only option.

So tomorrow (if the surgeon can get in schedule) our little Clayton, our heart, will go through major surgery to lose his leg.  I am absolutely distraught over the decision we have had to make.  If it was a back leg there would not be a hesitation but with it being a front leg the learning to walk again is much tougher, and the vet said his recovery will be much slower not only because of that but because he is 12-1/2 years old.  He's an older dog.  We will not put him down because he is in great health and this is the only thing wrong but I fear that he will not weather this well and that we will go down that road.  I DO NOT want to make that decision.  

Please say a LOT of prayers for our little Clayton.  

No comments: