So, the holidays are always usually hard for my family, being on the lower end of the income spectrum and all. But this year takes the cake.

We had to put our 13 yo male Blacklab mix to sleep yesterday. He has been suffering for awhile but he was really getting bad. Was having issues breathing, couldn't walk too well, going blind and deaf, coughing/hacking. Then recently he started bloating, around his midsection and then around his neck ' which was probably what was causing his breathing issues and coughing/hacking '

So, we made the decision to euthanize the poor man but we had no money...luckily, through the generosity of my wife's friends, we got y] the amount to get it done. My grandma threw in some money to have him cremated. Which I am glad of because the ground here is frozen and there would have been no way of being able to dig a grave.

Upon examining him, the vet mentioned that he looked like he had testicular cancer that finally moved through his body. Which is what was causing the bloating of the midsection and his throat area.

That said, make sure you get your dogs spayed or neutered. Besides the reasons why most people tell you about, they also aparrantly run a higher risk of getting testicular or ovarian cancer if they are left intact. IF people would start with that reasoning, I feel more people would get that done, I know we would have. We didn't get him neutered because he never had issues with the things people tell you about to get you to neuter them. He didn't go around spraying things, he didn't go around humping things and we never let him out of the yard nor did he ever tried to escape the yard to look for tail....so yea..