We adopted Guinness from the Oregon Humane Society in July of 2009. They had brought him from another shelter into their Second Chance program. We knew he was older, but he seemed to be in good shape, and our lab Jester was smitten with him. He had definite characteristics of an Irish Setter, gorgeous and goofy, although black, so hence, the reason we named him Guinness. Some of his obliviousness turned out to be partial deafness. His ears were clogged with goo, but even after cleaning them out, he could only hear loud noises, whistles and claps. We worked with him on hand signals, and he knew come, wait, go away/out, sit, lay-down (although he hated that one), and quiet (which he also hated, and would duck his head and pout). He suffered from seperation anxiety, but only when outside, so "quiet" was an important command.
Once we got him home to Seattle we found a large lump on him, but that turned out to be benign. Our vet said in the initial evaluation that he was very healthy, and thought he had a good six or more years of life left. But soon afterwards another lump developed that was cancerous. We had surgery to remove the lumps in the spring of 2010. When we had the cancer surgery we had Guinness tested for laryngeal paralysis (LP), because we noticed a problem with his breathing. We had lost another dog to LP just the year before, so we were familiar with the signs. It was confirmed that he had LP, but we chose not to do the tie-back surgery because our vet thought that the LP is part of a larger neurological problem, which indeed turned out to be the case. Over the course of the past year, Guinness started losing the functionality of his back legs. He fell down a lot, especially on the stairs and on the hardwood floors, partly because of degeneration, but also because he was a complete spaz.

We attempted to treat both the LP and the Degenerative Myelopathy with acupunture, which he got monthly for about a year, but stopped it when the last couple treatments didn't seem to give him any relief. A couple weeks before his death he sprained his right front foot, which wouldn't heal because we couldn't keep him down. He had amazing spirit and personality and he made me laugh every day. Even though he struggled on walks, he insisted on going, and would stress out if we didn't take him. The walks became shorter and shorter and took longer and longer, but we just went at his pace. He would still run around the house with his big stuffed bone in his mouth, and attempt to mix it up with Jester, our lab. He would usually end up sprawled out on the ground, so they would mouth wrestle from that position.

We made the decision to let Guinness go when the degeneration started to effect his bowels, which Dr. Mortimer says was a natural progression of the disease. I found myself crying more than laughing, and Guinness was stressing more and more. Friends came to see him the night before. We went for one last walk from the back gate, down the alley, and made our way down the street around to the front of the house, where we lifted him into the car and drove him to our vet. While it was a very tough thing to do, it was the right thing to do. Any longer would have just been selfish. He left us with most of his dignity still intact.


Thanks for all you do to help animals and train top-quality veterinarians.

Laurel K.