Here I Go...

So, I've decided to start a blog. 
Yeah.
OK.
Look, I don't really intend for anyone to read this, it's more of an I-need-to-vent-but-no one-really-wants-to listen-to-me kind of thing. Most of it will probably be about my work as a public high school teacher and so I'll need to leave out details that might compromise my students' privacy and I'll even need to avoid revealing my own identity too publicly. That's going to be a little weird and awkward at times, but I've seen too many teachers get into trouble not to take some precautions.
Having said that, my first post isn't about school... 

This past week sucked.
First there was ****. And then there wasn't.
**** was the neighbor's black lab. We already had dogs and weren't looking for any more, but **** was so sweet and so obviously wanting love and attention that my daughter and I couldn't resist him when he came over. My husband kept warning us that "you don't know what you're starting". He was right. When we put in a doggie dog a few weeks later, **** was the first one to use it and moved right in. When I stretched out in my recliner he would jump up and stretch out right beside me. No mean feat considering that he was a big dog and I am a big woman, but he didn't seem to mind being cramped. He was a beloved and constant companion for over ten years. 
One day he suddenly started walking off-balanced like he was drunk. We were terrified that he had suffered a stroke, but after doing some research it seemed more like vestibular disease; something that I'd ever heard of before. Naturally, this happened on a weekend after our vet was closed so we had to worry until we could get him seen. Some antibiotics and steroids return our boy to his old self and we thought that we had dodged the bullet. Vestibular disease usually clears up quickly on its own, but this didn't happen. As the weeks passed we had to keep upping his dose of steroids just to keep him something like normal, but he was steadily declining. For the first time his coat lost its healthy shine, his head was always tilted, and when he walked he often lost his balance. However, he was still happy and ate well, so we hoped that he was just an unusual case and that he would still recover since the other possibility was a neurological disorder or cancer. 
When I got home from work on Friday, Oct. 24th my daughter told me that **** had been out all day and that she'd just found him collapsed in the bushes in front of the house. My husband said that he had looked for him earlier and was sure that he wasn't there before. **** was in terrible shape and I really thought that he wouldn't make it through the night, despite pumping him full of extra medicine and using a syringe to give him water. I slept in the recliner in the living room to be near him during the night. In the morning he was up and moving and ate a good breakfast and once again I thought that **** wasn't leaving us yet. I was walking on air! I took all of the puppies outside, they saw a squirrel, and all of the puppies ran after it into the woods, including my boy. I was pleased that things were so normal (even though **** still walked a little unsteadily), so I went inside to get some sleep. A couple of hours later everyone was back but **** so I went looking for him. I searched the woods and called, but I couldn't find him. I was worried, but at the same time thought that if he was well enough to go hunting, maybe he was OK. A little later our neighbor (****'s original owner) came to tell us that our boy was at his house. We explained what had been going on with him and he said that **** had been throwing up in the water whenever he tried to drink. This was new and worrisome, but we had some medicine for nausea and I thought that it was a good sign that he had walked as far as the neighbor's house just for a visit. The neighbor brought **** down on his golf cart explaining that he had just kind of collapsed when he tried to get him into the cart. We helped him down, and while he was very unsteady, he was able to walk over to the outside water dish. The neighbor went home and I went over by **** and my husband and saw that **** wasn't throwing up into the water, but rather that when he drank thick, white mucous gushed out of his nose! This was a devastating development since it was definetly NOT a symptom of vestibular disease. Our vet isn't available that last weekend of the month, so we were on our own. Our beloved boy was clearly dying. We did what little we could for him, but it was breaking my heart to see him struggle to move. He was also having difficulty breathing with all of the mucus in his nose and his heart was racing. By Saturday night I had decided that we couldn't wait until Monday morning to take **** to the vet. We all realized that what we were talking about putting our sweetheart out of his misery, but it seemed too cruel to watch him suffer. I called another vet in the area Sunday morning and made an appointment to meet at their office in 45 minutes. **** was no longer responding to us at all and we had to carry him to the car. His eyes were open and he was breathing, but he was already gone. We took him into the office and the vet did a quick examination confirming that his pupils weren't reacting. A few short minutes later our family had a gaping hole in it that no amount of tears could fill.