This is Casey, the day we got the news. Casey has three brothers, Jake who’s black, Bode who’s brown, and Jet who is golden. Jake has lumbosacral stenosis and doesn’t walk a lot anymore, but the other three dogs walked about 15 miles uphill and down every week, and Casey was being a pain. Walks had gotten so slow, with so many flowers to smell. This was building for a while. Six month’s ago, we started noticing Casey getting older really fast. He wasn’t quite 11, so why? Off to the vet, where we also learned he’d lost about 3 pounds, but the vet figured he’s just slowing down. Fast forward to December 1st. we’re on our regular walk and the new neighbor’s dogs are out and barking, and all three of our dogs lunged, hard, and suddenly, Casey has a limp. Hmmm! We made it home, but slowly. Casey’s limp got better and worse, but after a few days off, we were back to walking, slowly. The slowest walk was two weeks later, and I crabbed at Casey all the way. He wasn’t really limping, but he was favoring a front leg. The next night, Ann called me out to show me a lump on Casey’s left wrist. It was only evident when he was standing, but it was definitely a lump. A little research and “Oh Crap!” The next day was Saturday but we were up early and off to the vet. This picture is from three minutes before the X-ray came back.
