The body is an amazing thing. Sometimes the body can compensate for things for a very long time before the disease becomes too overwhelming and symptoms occur. Sometimes, especially with internal problems such as a chest tumor that we can not see just by looking at the patient, once those symptoms start to show themselves it seems like everything goes downhill so fast. You start to wonder how you could possibly have missed something so huge. But, as hard as it is to believe, especially in the state of shock and grief that loosing a beloved pet leaves you, as often as not it does happen that quickly. It's not that you missed signs that something was wrong or waited too long to go to the vet, but rather that the body decompensates that quickly.
With my own dog, I knew what symptoms I was looking for and I had suspected that I had been seeing them for a few weeks. But they were also the same symptoms you would expect to see in a dog of her size and age with simple aging changes, so they weren't exactly sinister signs that concerned me. I took her in for her yearly check up on a Monday. There was nothing exciting on her physical exam, it was perfectly normal for a dog of her age and breed. The bloodwork that we did was not terribly remarkable either. It showed that she was a little anemic, but not enough that it was terribly concerning and anemia is common in older animals. Because she was a german shepherd and the breed is prone to hemangiosarcomas, we did x-rays to see if there were any masses that the vet couldn't feel on the physical exam. The x-rays were inconclusive, there was nothing there that screamed tumor. We did decide to do an abdominal ultrasound, just because the area of her spleen was not clearly visible on the x-rays and she was anemic and she was a breed that was high risk for splenic tumors. The ultrasound found free fluid in her abdomen, and an enlarged (although not enormous) spleen, both of which are indicative of hemangiosarcoma of the spleen. My vet told me that she probably had 3-6 months left and while surgery and chemotherapy were options they probably wouldn't buy her much time and they would make her very uncomfortable for a fair part of the time those procedures would have bought (and I've seen it myself first hand with a client's dog...it wasn't something I was willing to put my old girl through). So we went home and planned to spoil her for the next few months. We lost her that Friday, not even a week after the diagnosis of cancer. The morning we lost her, she went on a long walk/run through the forest with me and my younger dog, tearing off into the woods to chase squirrels and appearing a few minutes later panting happily. That day she was perfectly normal, and that evening when we left to go out for dinner she was fine. By the time we got home, she was acting a little off. In the hour and a half that it took the vet to get to the house, she went from just nervous and panting/pacing to stumbling and falling over when she got up to bark at the vet at the door.
With my own dog, I knew what symptoms I was looking for and I had suspected that I had been seeing them for a few weeks. But they were also the same symptoms you would expect to see in a dog of her size and age with simple aging changes, so they weren't exactly sinister signs that concerned me. I took her in for her yearly check up on a Monday. There was nothing exciting on her physical exam, it was perfectly normal for a dog of her age and breed. The bloodwork that we did was not terribly remarkable either. It showed that she was a little anemic, but not enough that it was terribly concerning and anemia is common in older animals. Because she was a german shepherd and the breed is prone to hemangiosarcomas, we did x-rays to see if there were any masses that the vet couldn't feel on the physical exam. The x-rays were inconclusive, there was nothing there that screamed tumor. We did decide to do an abdominal ultrasound, just because the area of her spleen was not clearly visible on the x-rays and she was anemic and she was a breed that was high risk for splenic tumors. The ultrasound found free fluid in her abdomen, and an enlarged (although not enormous) spleen, both of which are indicative of hemangiosarcoma of the spleen. My vet told me that she probably had 3-6 months left and while surgery and chemotherapy were options they probably wouldn't buy her much time and they would make her very uncomfortable for a fair part of the time those procedures would have bought (and I've seen it myself first hand with a client's dog...it wasn't something I was willing to put my old girl through). So we went home and planned to spoil her for the next few months. We lost her that Friday, not even a week after the diagnosis of cancer. The morning we lost her, she went on a long walk/run through the forest with me and my younger dog, tearing off into the woods to chase squirrels and appearing a few minutes later panting happily. That day she was perfectly normal, and that evening when we left to go out for dinner she was fine. By the time we got home, she was acting a little off. In the hour and a half that it took the vet to get to the house, she went from just nervous and panting/pacing to stumbling and falling over when she got up to bark at the vet at the door.
I read your post with tears eyes - & even noticed you are near me! 
