Sadly, we had to put our greyhound RC to sleep last night (Jan 24th).

A few weeks ago she began having trouble keeping her back legs together when walking on any moderately slick surface (tile, hardwood, IOW). She started doing accidental splits periodically, which of course made it worse because she'd strain the muscles. After a while she would buck up and seem to get better, then it would happen again.

This sort of thing isn't entirely unusual for her because she has had a bad right rear-lower leg since she was 18mos old: we had her rebuilt when we adopted her because she had multiple compound fractures from a track injury they never fixed. So we're used to having her hobble around more than usual for various periods of time.

About two weeks ago she had another bad split and fall that really gimped her bad. She seemed basically OK though. She ate, drank, and did her business. Hopped around using mostly 3 legs.

The last couple of days though it was quite evident she wasn't improving, and in fact seemed to be getting worse. She would lay down all day and night until I hoisted her up. When she was up she didn't want to lay down again and would stand and whine. I carried her up to bed every night and carried her outside and back in again for potty times.

Her good leg was getting weaker from lack of use and so it was harder for her to stand when she was up. When she managed to stand, she would eat and drink, but only then, so she was getting a bit dehydrated too.

Increasing doses of rimadyl didn't help as she already was at a fairly high dosage all her life.

So I made an appointment with the vet, and brought her in yesterday morning.

To make a long story short, it turns out she had broken her hip on the "bad" leg. X-rays showed decalcification of the head, neck and proximal areas of her femur. It also was indicative of a possible osteosarcoma. Basically the "ball" of the hip had sheared off the rest of the femur.

Had she been a young dog, the only option would have been to remove the broken off material, neaten the rest up and sew her back together. However for a dog approaching 13 with possible bone cancer this wasn't a viable option.

Morphine would have helped her with pain, but obviously wouldn't have done anything else to improve her situation.

We had a difficult, but obvious choice to make. So around 6pm last night RC left us, but we were all with her. She was a fighter though, as she always was. It took double the Euthasol dose to send her on her way.

She's now buried next to our other greyhound "T" in the backyard.

Actually, we had a double burial. Connor's Betta fish Freddy died just around Christmas and had been waiting in the freezer since then for a proper moment

We're quite sad. We're now dogless for the first time in about 12 years.

Our two cats though, seem to be eternal They're up around 16 1/2 now. Oh the joy of hairballs