Tripawds Three Legged Dog & Cat Forum Archives

Hi everyone, I haven't been on here in a while. I do check in on you guys and see how everyone is doing. Tucker, Gracie and Hoyt send their love to all their friends!

Question... Tucker has gone down hill really fast. Ryan and I went out of town for the weekend on Thursday night and my sister kept Tucker at her house. I noticed earlier in the week that he was getting a little slower but I thought it may just be the heat so I kept him inside more. Over the weekend my sister said he slowly stopped eating very much, he would pick at his food but not eat all of it. For those of you with labs, you know that's NOT normal! When we got home Sunday night we tried to feed him some canned food which he picked at but wouldn't eat it with us standing there. When we left it in his cage and left him alone he ate most of it. Over the last couple of days I have made him chicken and rice, canned food soup, cooked ground beef, anything I could think of that would entice him to eat. He will eat a little bit if we hand feed it to him but he won't go to the food himself. I find that he eats a little more if we leave the food in his crate but he still won't finish it completely. All this has happened so fast! He has been completely normal up until now. He's panting really hard and seems to be weaker than normal. We have an appointment with the vet this afternoon and hopefully we can figure out if its the cancer or maybe hes just sick. Ryan and I both knew this was coming but we didn't expect it to be so fast! We don't want him to suffer, he has been the best dog so he doesn't deserve that. Did anyone else have this occur? If so, was it at the end or did they ever get better before getting worse? I just feel so bad for him! I don't want him to suffer. What can I do to ease his pain? (other than pain meds, because we started him on those Sunday night with some we had left over from his surgery)