To all three of you who made timely replies to my last post, I thank you. I don't actually know how to start this entry; everything is still swimming in my mind. Abby was acting strange last night: she refused to sit down, her tail was tucked, she was panting heavily, and couldn't even climb the three stairs leading inside the house from the patio. At first we thought, "Oh great... She's all clogged up again. Looks like the vet will have to get those bowels moving." She paced all night, kept my parents up as she insisted on sleeping in their room, and even though she was wagging her tail this morning, something just wasn't right.

I came home from school, and as expected, my mom had scheduled an appointment to go to the veterinarian’s. We got there, they weighed her, they looked in her ears, blah, blah, blah, and couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. Finally, the vet suggested that an x-ray be taken of her abdomen, as it appeared that her underside was undergoing a lot of pressure. The pictures were taken, and when we got them back, the vet traced out Abby's spleen for us. "A normal spleen looks something like a tongue," she explained. Abby's looks like a light-bulb.

She has some sort of growth or tumor festering on her spleen, and is currently heading to an animal clinic in Fairfax to have an ultrasound. If the growth is small, they may be able to remove it and allow her to live for a few more months. However, the chance of the cancer coming back is almost guaranteed, and even if they removed her spleen entirely, the illness would simply take over her liver, which cannot be removed or altered, for obvious reasons. If the growth is large, it will likely rupture and burst within the next day or two, in which Abby would have to be put down. The blood samples they took show that there's already internal bleeding occurring in her belly.

I don't know what else to say at this point. Deep down, I hope she doesn't come home tonight. I hope this is it, and that I don't have to go through all this pain again, and that Abby will go to a better place. One where she won't lumber around with her arthritic legs or try and wipe her eye-boogers on people's pants or have to worry about spinning-out on the hardwood. I can't take much more of this; she's so old now, at least for a lab, and every time something happens to her, I feel like it's the end. When she fell down the stairs two weeks ago, or a few years ago when she smashed her leg, or a few years before that when she smashed her other leg. Kennel cough. Ear infection. Dog fight. I'm tired of wondering when she's going to pop-off. Will I be at school? College? Will I get a pass from the office or a late night phone call? I just want her to happy, wherever she is, not suffering. I don't want to watch her die, or see her in pain. I don't want her to waste away or fade or just deteriorate. I want to remember her as she was half and hour ago -- with the rain coating her fur, sitting in the back of the car, just laying there, acting ashamed and knowing her time was running out, breathing normally, looking back at me from over her shoulder with those big brown eyes that used to sparkle. They're dull now; it hurts.

Kurt Vonneggut always killed off his characters with a simple "So it goes."

...So it goes.