Hello everyone,
Our 12 year old Staffy has been deteriorating for around 2 years now. He has degenerative mylepothy which means his back legs give way under him/he has little feeling in them and he has lost all the muscle from his rear and back. This will eventually spread to his tail, front legs and eventually he’ll be incontinent. He’s probably 4 or 5 months away from that.
He also has myositis which has caused his head to appear sunken above his eyes. Again a similar muscle wasting problem that will eventually cause his muscles to become fixed and he won’t be able to open his mouth. He struggles to chew as it is.
He sometimes chokes on his food, the vet suspects he has a growth on his chest. He’s emitting an awful smell, the vet thinks it’s his kidneys or digestive system. My husband won’t have any investigative work done, he doesn’t think he’ll survive the anaesthetic. And knows they’ll find something.
He’s skin and bone, but when you stroke him you can feel a swelling on his stomach.
He wags his tail when you stroke him, he’s still eating and drinking. He has around 5 mins play time with our other 3 dogs a day, spends the rest of the time at the end of the garden or curled up in the corner of my husbands office. He won’t get up to come for a treat. That’s too much hard work.
He can’t stand for long, his back legs end up doing the splits.
He takes an anti inflammatory once a day, which really helped to start with he had a new lease of life, but we’re back to how he was before even with them now.. only 1 month later.
I’m also worried that one of my children are going to hurt him and he’ll snap (which he did once before we got him on this medication) .
I think it’s time to say goodbye, and my husband is agreeing but doesn’t want to make that decision. I feel like we’re playing God. But we can both see he’s just ‘existing’. I think he probably has a few months left, but I don’t want to leave him too long. He’s the alpha in the pack of 4, and a very strong dog, so I expect he’s struggling more than he’s letting on.... If it was my little Pug I don’t think she’d still be here.
Google doesn’t help much when it comes to googling if it’s time or not. The vet won’t pass comment but has been saying for 2 years we need to think about it.
My husbands previous Staffs have all had cancer younger than this and he could see what was wrong and knew how it was going to go and it made the decision easier somehow.
Any advice from someone looking in from the outside without the emotion attached would be great. Thank you.