Cruel to be kind.

I poisoned one dog on Saturday, and I'm turning the other over to strangers to be cut up on Friday.

I'm feeling kind of guilty over it. You can't explain it to them. But it's for their own good. 

Big dog Tralfaz, who just turned eight, got these giant lumps on him last summer. Once some initial tests and a lumpectomy confirmed that it was cancer, we started him on radioactive chemotherapy. Just two pills, once a month, for six months. The first two doses worked splendidly, and the remaining lumps receded. His liver enzymes shot up too, so the vet said give it a month off and then start it again. So, I just did.

These chemo pills cannot be chewed, of course, and getting capsules into this hairy beast is a challenge. Ultimately I have settled on tricking him with the offer of a treat and then shoving them into his throat far enough so he has to swallow them. He coughed one up anyway, so I had to repeat it--and I have to move fast because those gel caps dissolve quickly. I only have the two, specially ordered from a compounding pharmacy; I don't have a whole bottle of chemo pills like aspirin. 

Dogs will never understand that the faster you swallow something, the less you have to taste it. It's the only way anyone eats kale, or so I'm convinced. 

The pills kill his appetite for a day or two, but he's otherwise doing marvelously well on them. I am in fact poisoning him; that's how chemotherapy works. Paracelsus stated a long time ago that the dose makes the poison, thus chemotherapy's mission is to kill you just enough to wipe out the cancer without actually going all the way. Some people on it react so poorly that they prefer to just let the cancer take its course. I'm grateful that Tralfaz is not suffering this much. We had decided out the outset of treatment that if this was very hard on him, we would stop the chemo, but so far so good. 

He's an older guy, and while we can't explain it to him, presumably has that philosophical nature that older dogs get about the misfortunes and vicissitudes of life. Baby Izzy, almost but not quite nine months old, does not have this attitude. But what he does have is loose cartilage in his elbows, and hip bones that aren't quite large enough to keep the leg bones from popping out from time to time. The latter doesn't seem to bother him as much as the sound of it bothers us, but the vet assures us that his hips will be arthritic and painful when he is older unless we get him a hip replacement. He's too young for that now, but they can do arthroscopic surgery on his elbows. 

They'll probably have to keep him at least one night, and there's the rub--this is the dog who can't stand it if I go upstairs for a shower while my wife's working. He hates to be alone and isn't shy about telling us. It's made for all sorts of problems at bedtime. How's he going to take it when we have to leave him at the animal hospital overnight?

Luckily the hospital is a 24-hour facility, so there will be staff around; also, they will probably keep him doped up pretty solid from the time we drop him off Friday. But I'll worry about the little dude the whole time he's gone.

On a less sentimental note, this is costing a fortune. Tralfaz has pet insurance, which helps, but Izzy started to limp at a very young age, before he was insured; we thought he'd just twisted something, so we took him to the vet. Bam, preexisting condition, no expenses at all can be charged to his health policy. Bleah.

All this comes on the heels of losing Nipper last February. He also had cancer, but it was so incredibly aggressive that there was no treatment that could help. Poor little chap. 

I wish I could explain everything to them in a way they would understand, but of course you can't. It makes me wonder how parents with babies who need serious medical care keep from losing their minds. God bless them all.