Our first "baby" came into our family in September 2005
We thought we should "practice" with a dog
before we ventured into parenting.
She was an adorable,
floppy eared, licking-everything,
little ball of fur.
We picked her from a litter of 4
at the Humane Society--
she was the quiet one with green eyes.
We were in love from day one.
We weren't perfect parents--
we did forget to feed her on her first night home.
But when she whimpered in her kennel at night in the dining room,
eventually one of us would get up
and sleep on the floor beside her.
Two weeks after we got her,
when she was only 8 weeks old,
she was attacked by a great big, ugly, mean dog
and was in the ICU for 3 days.
She had severed a major artery and torn several nerves in her neck.
As we flew across town pushing fluids started by our vet,
we thought she was going to die.
It was awful.
But our strong little puppy battled back.
She came through better than ever.
We did the things dog parents do:
went on lots of walks and hikes,
frolicked in the snow
(she REALLY loved the snow),
bought her a pool,
made her take Christmas pictures,
and our world revolved around our Montega.
Then we were joined by our second baby,
Jackson.
Monti walked the halls with us,
helping him through his colic.
She got up for every diaper change.
She was as exhausted as we were.
Years passed.
We moved back to Missouri with our Ohio dog.
There were more kids,
lots of time at the lake and on the boat,
more snow,
flying leaps off the deck,
crazy circles in the yard,
lots of walks.
Lots of good times.
Monti brought us lots of scares over the years, too.
In 2010,
she got whip worm and suffered from bilateral retinal detachment.
She was blind in both eyes.
The doctors said she'd learn to get around as a blind dog.
She did better than that--
she got her sight back.
In 2012,
Monti developed a huge swelling under her jaw.
They biopsied it and said she had lymphoma and needed to start chemo.
We stalled and treated her ear infection.
The mass went away--
just a lymph node from the infection.
In 2013,
Monti got a bump in her right leg.
We ignored it for awhile--she always got better--
but eventually we headed to the vet.
On biopsy, they determined it was a mast cell tumor.
They said we needed to amputate her leg.
She had made it through everything else,
she was so spunky,
we couldn't take away her leg.
So we did a course of steroids.
It went away.
But eventually it came back.
More steroids,
it mostly went away.
But then back again.
In August 2014,
it got bad enough,
unresponsive enough,
we enrolled her in a clinical trial for chemo.
We apparently were in the placebo limb because
her leg continued to swell.
We left the trial and started steroids again.
No response this time.
The tumor only grew.
Our poor pup could hardly walk.
But she was still smiling.
The tumor ruptured Thursday night and the drainage was uncontrollable.
We started chemo on Friday in desperation to buy some time.
Saturday she spent the day outside in the warm sun with lots of love from her family.
Saturday night, it started to bleed uncontrollably.
We headed to the vet in the middle of the night.
They kept her to dress the wound.
Sunday she came home, but her poor infected, tumorous foot was too much for us to handle.
Monday the surgeon said it needed to be amputated,
but she had torn all the ligaments in her left knee and it would need to be repaired or amputated too.
And she would need continuing chemo.
And it would buy us a few months, maybe.
We realized it was time to let our sweet dog go.
She had spent all 9 of her lives.
She was tired.
So we fed her a whole can of her favorite stinky dog food,
a bowl of beef and noodles,
took her for one last walk
and went to the vet one last time.
She shed more than any dog we ever met.
She was a pest, always wanting to be pet.
She was so sweet, so patient, so good with the boys.
She was smart and could "play dead" with the best of them.
She was our first baby, a special place in our family.
Montega, we will always love you, Dogger-Do!
We miss you every day.
