Yes. Since the woman he usued to see wasn’t there, his last visit in April was not informative (except that I learned what an idiot the veterinarian was). Within a few days, he had masses throughout his body and was soon limping around. He had several leg injuries as a young dog, so he limped periodically anyway. I didn’t think too much about it first. As far as the masses, I thought the first one was just a fat deposit.
He was having trouble breathing without the air on by about June.
About three weeks ago I thought he was going to die that day. He began making horrible sounds, and was just having too much trouble breathing. He’d been bloating, but that day he looked like roadkill about to explode. The vet was out of the question because I was told just over the phone that it was going to be quite a chunk of money (more than a thousand) for the necessary testing. Not to mention the way the last visit her gone didn’t leave me feeling good about it.
He lived, but it became apparent that he was not going to make it into the fall. As soon as I had to turn off the air-conditioning in exchange for heat, he would stop breathing properly. So I began making plans for September or October (we never know on the east coast). Suddenly on Tuesday he just hit rock bottom. In the middle of the night, he was gasping for breath. In the early morning, it happened again. This continued the next night too. It was one thing when he was going outside or coming in. He should have been okay at night.
Friday morning he seemed kind of okay. I laid him on his back to rub his stomach. Other times he’d breathe funny on a bad day. Friday he was crushed. No noise. No movement. He was not breathing at all.
As far as the “what was going on?” I can only say that it looked like cancer, and a tumor was on his trachea.