Our Sheltie Larry

We are about ready to go on the road again.  We have spent the last 9 months in Washington, except for a few short trips over the summer.  We returned in December 2010 to spend Christmas with Diane, Ken & Lily.  Our plan was to leave after Lily's Birthday, but that all changed. In early January I was playing with our Sheltie, Larry, and noticed the lymph nodes on his neck were enlarged.  We took him to Vet and were told he had lymphoma.  We had only a couple options..to do nothing and he would have about a month or have him receive a protocol of chemo treatments which could put the cancer in remission.  Larry was a rescued Sheltie and only about 7 years old.  He has been our special boy for 5 years. We had purchased Pet Health Insurance for him a year ago, so our decision to choose the chemo treatments was easy. He did great on the chemo, no side effects and his lymphoma went into remission.  Unfortunately he didn't stay in remission as long as we had hoped.  Many dogs stay in remission for 2 or more years, but of course you never know how each dog will react.  The end of July his cancer was back and spreading.  The Onocolgist at the Vet Specialty Clinic where he was treated didn't have any good options except to keep him comfortable for a few weeks.  He did fine for a couple weeks until his lymph nodes on his neck became enlarged again and he was having trouble eating and breathing.  So we had to make that hard decision that it was time to let him go.  We are happy we made the decision to stay and let him go through the treatments even though it gave us only 7 months.  It was worth it.  Now we will start our travels without our traveling companion.  Larry was a great RVing dog and we are missing him.  Our Ragdoll Katt Toby will now take over. 

Lily had Ray & I and her grandparents from Jacksonville, FL all together for Christmas.
Joanne Krause, Ray, Lily, Sandy and Bob Krause  

Our Larry - 26 July 2011