This is Taz. My partner and I got a phone call at about 2 am back in 1987 from a friend who works for a local animal shelter. She said "I know you guys haven't been looking for a dog but you have to come down and see this dog".
So at 3 am we're in the shelter and out comes this 5 month old pug. She came running up to us with her whole body wagging! Her head was so small it fit into the palm of your hand! I don't think it took me longer than a minute to decide. She came home with us 5 days later, after the allotted time to allow someone to claim her and to go through the vet check etc. It was a very long 5 days.
She got her name because she would spin around just like the Tasmanian devil! She brought so much joy and happiness to our family. I went through so much with her.
When she was just a young pup she had heart worms and spent a couple of days at the vets with an IV having arsenic pumped into her. I had her on heart worm medicine during the spring and summer but her old vet said that I didn't have to keep her on medicine during the winter or fall. That's why he became her old vet.
At about ten or eleven years of age I had to rush her to my vet, she was in respiratory distress. They sent me to a hospital about 70 miles away. When I arrived they took her right in. My vet had called ahead.
They put her in an incubator for three days and gave her medicine through an IV. They called me at work on that third day and told me I could come and pick her up but that she had a brain tumor and didn't have very long to live.
They based their diagnosis on, among other things her walk. They said she had paddle feet. I picked her up the next day with very mixed emotions. I was so happy to see her and heartbroken at the same time. I am very happy to say she did not have a brain tumor and lived to just short of her 18th birthday!
There were so many trips to the vet after that. She had a partially collapsed trachea, and then it was an enlarged heart. She went deaf but learned sign language. There were so many problems but she had so much fight in her. In between all the problems there were many great years.
The final day came when she went into respiratory distress, again. I rushed her to the vet, they rushed her and me to the back and my vet came in and asked me if I was ready to let her go. Deep down I knew that was the question she was going to ask.
I looked into Taz's eyes and she said "yes, I'm tired, it’s going to be OK, and you can let me go". I let her go with a very heavy heart but I knew it was what she wanted and I had to do it for her. She died in my arms.
Those 18 years. I'll never forget. We miss her every day.