Sorry it has been so long since i’ve posted but between work, vet visits, and family it has been busy around here. Well we went last thursday for Boagey’s fourth and final chemo, his labs were perfect ( they said they looked like a puppy’s)  but his chest x-ray showed small mets to his lungs. i was devastated. I am trying to remain positive and just be thankful for the good days that we have had and the ones still to come. Otherwise Boagey seems to be doing well, he is still eating well, still getting around good, and doesnt seem to be in any type of respiratiory distress, which i am thankful for. This whole ordeal has been very hard on not only us but our families as well, because everyone loves our Boagey. Our vet said that the chemo would slow the growth but that it would eventually take him from us. I was a little angry at first because we have put him through so much, the surgery for amputation, the chemo, and yet we are still going to lose him, but now i realize that i am thankful for everyday that we get to spend with him and every good day that he has and i credit those good days to everything that we have done thus far. We were also very fortunate that out of all four chemo treatments that we did that Boagey only got sick once, usually we would go in the morings and  then come home and he would sleep until late afternoon, but other than that he did very well. It is still hard on both me and my husband to think that he wont be around forever. He honestly has the best most lovable humble personality of any dog that i have ever had, and he will be greatly missed. I guess that is all i have to say, i will try to keep updates as a i get time.

Hello everyone, I am not sure who it is or why but there are some people leaving some not so nice comments about me and my decision (i have not approved any of them) and i just wanted to tell everyone who feels that i have not done the right thing to move on and not read the post and not bother commenting, because you are not here and you are not in my situation and we did what we thought was the best thing we could for our dog. So please leave me alone and stop harrasing me telling me that we are wrong and that we havent done the right thing, beacause we feel that we have!

For those of you that have been following us, Boagey is doing great, hopping all over the place, he is at the inlaws right now as we are on vacation, and i miss him dearly, but we call every day and his mom tells us that Boagey is okay and doing fine and running everywhere, and yes i mean run, he can still outrun me (or out hop i guess) on three legs, lol. We go for our second chemo next friday and expect everything to go good with it. I’ll keep everyone posted!

Well its been a while since we’ve posted but things have been pretty uneventful (again just the way we like).Boagey has been doing well, he had a fall last night but other than that he gets around well. He got sick about two days after chemo but other than that he’s done fine. We go to get his stitches out in the morning & his site looks like it has healed really well. We still have problems getting him to eat “his” food but its getting better. I’ll keep everyone posted on how he progresses.

Well, Boagey is back home from Jordan’s parents house, we also took him for his first chemo treatment today. Everything seems fine and our life is uneventful at the moment, which is just the way i like it. i took Boagey early this morning for chemo, they gave it to him, we waited a few minutes then we drove back home. No side effects to report! The only things i have found is with Boagey being back home he doesn’t want any help whatsoever, which is a little difficult because we have slick floors and earlier he was trying to get up and when i got up to help he just rolled back over and laid down. So i guess i’ll just let him figure it out on his own, but other than that he’s getting around great, his incision is healing nicely other than a little bit of swelling that i have noticed, and he seems to be doing just fine. Oh yea, my mother in law mentioned that he still wont eat his dogfood, the only way he was eating for her was to mix people food in with it! so i have spoiled my dog and our grocery bill is going up, but other than that things are great!

Well, I am truley impressed each and every day by how much Boagey is improving. He’s up walking on his own, his wound is looking better, and he just seems to be back to his old self, minus a leg of course. We took him to the inlaws last night to stay for a few days because i have to go back to work tomorrow and my husband has been working out of state mon-fri so we thought it would be best for a few days for him to stay there with Jordan’s mom as opposed to being home alone all day. I hated to leave him but i know he is in good hands and will be very well taken care of, and i’ll go pick him up first thing Thursday morning. When we put him in the car he was a little nervous i guess because of the last time he was in a car going somewhere and what happened. But once we got there he was fine. He hopped all over the place and he went right up the stairs to their house. Hopefully our chemo will be in Thursday and we can get that started. I am truley thankful that he is getting better with each and every day,  I’ll keep everyone posted on our progress when i go pick him up in a few days.  Below are some pictures of him checking the place out. He still choses the roughest hardest paths to go, i try to discourage it but he doesnt listen to his mommy very much. LOL

Let me just start by saying that I am VERY proud of my Boagey! Last night when my husband got home he got Boagey up and got him outside and he went down the stairs to our porch and out to the driveway all by himself without any help from us only us there beside him to catch him if he fell. He done this again last night and this morning about 5am. He also got back on the couch for the first time since his surgery by himself, but i knew he wouldn’t stay off the couch long and that it was only a matter of time. LOL.  Then this morning i made a quick trip to McDonalds to get us all some breakfast (Boagey included because he is still on strike from dogfood) and when i got home he was out in the yard all by himself! I asked my husband and he said that he got up all on his own and when he opened the door and went to help him out that he just hopped out and down the stairs before he could get his shoes on, so he said he watched him for a few minutes and he seemed to have the hang of it. I was so proud. Even though he has been able to navigate the stairs pretty well we still built a ramp for the front of our porch, it probably looks a little silly it even has carpet on it, but it helps him get down into the yard easier. The only trouble he has ran into today was getting tired which was to be expected and once he got on the couch and he laid on the side of the amputation which caused some problems and i think hurt his self-esteem, but we helped him off and everything was okay after that. I hope to continue to have only good days but i know that there will probably be a few bad too, i just hope they are few and far between. I have also found that i look forward to getting on here and sharing our story, it is so comforting to get on here in the evenings and read all the positive things and well wishes from so many that have been in my place. It is nice to know that we are not alone in this journey. Thank you all again and I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Well we’re home! Boagey came home yesterday evening and it’s already been a rollercoaster ride….I had my doubts when i picked him up yesterday, he wouldn’t even sit up on his own all he seemed to want to do was lay on his side, and the nurses that worked at the vets were having to hold his head up for him, i was begining to fear that maybe we hadn’t done the right thing. Well let me just tell ya, we got in the truck on the way home and he sat right up all on his own and was just like his usual self, well minus one of his limbs. We headed home and when we got there i thought all was going good, we helped him out of the truck and then he decided it was time to nap, right there in the middle of the driveway! so needless to say he had to be packed into the house, all 120 pounds of him, LOL. The first trip outside was a little scary, but he seemed to be doing okay and was managing with the help from us. And he’s went out twice today (which he has always only went out about two times a day, sometimes only once!) and each time he seems to be doing okay, he hops around and i hold him under his head to help him balance, but i think we will be just fine with a little work and practice. Now to me being a worrier, i have called the vet’s office twice already and we havent even been home for twenty-four hours! and you would think that me being an RN that i would be better prepared for what to expect and everything, WRONG! LOL! It is entirely different when your patient cant tell you if he’s in pain or if he’s okay or if he feels funny and its different when its your baby. Anyway the first phone call was concerning the drainage, it seemed everytime he got up or even sat up his wound would drain a lot of bloody drainage and when we would got out it would drip, this was starting to alarm me but when i called they said that it was normal and for me to just keep a check on his mucous membrane and thier color and make sure he doesn’t start to get weak. Okay we are going to be fine, or so i thought. THe second phone call was concerning a large blood clot that came out between the stitches the last time we got him up and took him out. it worried me, i called, was told again that this was normal and what to watch for. Okay so i think that i need to find something to do with my spare time seeing as Boagey is back to his favorite activity, which is lying on his bed beneath my feet sleeping, he sleeps a lot, but its normal for him. It was heartbreaking seeing him for the first time without his leg, but i’m getting okay with it. I still feel kinda bad for putting him through it, but i keep telling myself that we are doing the right thing and that it is what needed to be done if we wanted to have him around much longer. Oh yeah, we haven’t started chemo yet, the was an issue with the supplier and the dosage concentration being wrong when they recieved it so they are getting it from another supplier so we have to wait until next week. I willl keep holding onto hope, because that is all we have. I keep praying that Boagey will do okay, I think i will feel better when he can walk on his own though. I’ll keep ya’ll updated! Ashley

I just wanted to make a quick post to tell all of you that really appreciate all of ur comments and support. It really means a lot to me that u all have taken the time to read our story and post ur comments thanks again and ill be sure to post tomorrow when we get back home and settledm thanks again, Ashley

Well, I’m not quite sure where to start, I have never blogged before but we are going to give it a try. I guess I’ll start from the well, start, about 5 years ago my then boyfriend (now husband) Jordan got a then 1 1/2 year old great dane named Boagey. We aren’t quite sure of his past but it didn’t really matter to us. 2 1/2 years ago we merged households two people, two dogs and one cat later here we are. I always say we don’t have kids but we have our pets and i would do anything for them which brings me to today.
March 25, 2010: the day that changed everything. I had been taking Boagey to the vet two sometimes three times a week for about a month for laser treatments for a knot that had appeared on his leg, our wonderful vet had x-rayed it and the x-ray hadn’t showed anything alarming had been treating it as a sprain. But on this day me and our vet had been talking and we decided to do a second x-ray “just to make sure”,  but the second x-ray showed what i had feared all along, Boageyhad bone cancer! Our vet gave me the options and talked with me and answered what quesions I could think to ask but i was just so thrown off guard and upset that i couldn’t think  straight. Me and Boageyheaded home for the longest thirty minute car ride ever. I think i actually cried the entire time home. When we got home and i had gathered my thoughts i got my computer out and googled bone cancer in dogs along with amputation and chemo, i found a lot of helpful information. One of our greatest fears was that where he is such a large dog that he wouldn’t be able to walk around on three legs after an amputation, but i found several stories of great danes who have been able to get around after amputation. On Monday March 29th i took Boagey to a second vet just to confirm what I already knew, He also took an x-ray and told me that it was bone cancer and he needed an amputation. I just had to get the second opinion to be sure that we were making the right decision in amputating his leg. We decided to go the route of amputation, his leg was obviously bothering him and something had to be done, we didn’t want him to be in pain. we also have this small hope that maybe we have caught it early enough that it hasn’t yet spread beyond that point.
I called our vet, we set everything up and  I took Boagey to his office this morning at 10am to get things started. They drew labs and done a chest x ray, his labs were perfect and his x ray was clear, this gives us hope. We have opted to do chemo treatments of carboplatin, and even though this is all a little expensive we feel that it he is worth it to us. I left the vets, worried but okay with the informed decisions we have made. Our vet called me around 2:30 this afternoon and told me that the surgery had went well and that he was just starting to wake up from the anesthesia, so far so good. I can’t wait until i can go pick him up tomorrow. I am also very thankful that i found this site so that i have a release for everything that i am going through and that i can talk to people that have been where i am and maybe our story will help someone who has yet to go down this road.  I will post more this weekend.