RIP Riley, my beautiful Golden boy

[Hypancistrus]

Back in May I posted a thread about our Golden Retriever, Riley, who was diagnosed with a spindle cell tumor on his hip. We had it removed and the vet was positive that clean edges were obtained and said it shouldn't trouble him further. As part of the prep work for the surgery they did full x-rays and an ultrasound of his abdomen and found no cancer in his body.

Much to our surprise, we came home from dinner Friday night and found that Riley couldn't walk well and his stomach was very distended. We rushed him to our vet (luckily she was on night shift all week) and she immediately did xrays, thinking that he had gastric torsion. The xrays revealed that he had an aggressive form of cancer inside his body, on his spleen and all over his lungs. She said there was nothing they could do for him that would work at this late stage, with a cancer so aggressive that it spread that far and fast, in five months. So we made the difficult decision to put him to sleep. My fiance and I laid with him while he passed.

We are both devastated. We had gotten a new puppy, a papillon in early September to keep our Chihuahua company, and we are blessed to have her. She and the chihuahua have become great buddies and play together often. Apache, the chihuahua, seemed fine on Friday night. But last night he seemed to become very depressed. He keeps moping around the house and while he still plays and eats, he doesn't do so with his usual gusto. He's very subdued. I think that he is grieving Riley's loss and I don't know how to help him, especially when the pain of the loss is still so fresh and raw with my fiance and I. We spent so much time crying yesterday I think the sea level may have rose a bit from our tears...

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to help a grieving dog heal?

[Neal]

I'm really sorry for your loss. I'm not sure of how to help your dog, but I've heard of this in a lot of animals that lose a companion. Hope somebody has some insight.

[GoingPostal]

I'm so sorry for your loss-it's so hard to lose them. For your other dog mainly time is all you really do, you can try distracting him a bit, keeping his mind busy with toys, training, nice visit somewhere else. There's also a variety of calming things you can try, we have a high stress pup so I've had collars and plugins and treats, it depends on the dog what works though.

[AlexisFitzy]

I'm so sorry for your loss a friend of mine is going through the same thing now. She had two greyhounds that grew up together but one of them got cancer and had to be put to sleep...Now the Tune comes to work with Linda everyday so she doesn't have to be alone in the house looking for Reebok. So just observing this situation and watching Tune's behavior I feel like your dog will heal along with you. Like another post said lots of distraction and lots and lots of extra love to assure them that everything is going to be okay. You guys are in this together and will heal together. Sending lots of love to you and pups ❤️


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[Albert Clark]

Sympathies go out to you and yours for the loss. I think time will be a factor in regrouping and grieving. Although staying busy in a positive way is healing. Best Wishes.

[Fraido]

Aweh, so sorry. *hugs*

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[butterballpython]

I'm so sorry to hear that you lost Riley. At least you were able to do him the final kindness of letting him go before his pain got any worse.

Your grieving dogs could probably use some extra love and attention right now--and you could probably use some extra time with them, too. Losing a dog is hard.