Dora

It was July when we learned Dora had Lymphoma. (See July post here.) We expected to only have a couple months with her, but we got five. The last month Dora's been slowing down a lot & tumors have been growing. The past week it's been worse & she's started having more trouble getting up and down and eating, so we knew it was time to make a difficult decision.
We've struggled a lot with how to explain things to Cooper. In July Cooper was still learning the dogs' names and we thought he might mention her name a few times after she was gone & it would be hard on us but that he wouldn't notice much. But so much time has gone by now & he's grown so much & understands so much more that we have to explain it to him. We decided we did not want to mention the doctor or "sleep" because we didn't want either of those things to be scary to him. Instead, we've been telling him for a while that she's sick and doesn't feel well. Today we explained to him that Dora was so sick that she would have to leave to go someplace where she will be all better, and that we're sad because we'll never see her again, but happy because she will feel better and be happy.
Cooper & I said our goodbyes to Dora at home and John took her to the vet. They were very understanding and made a clay paw print for us to keep.
Rest in peace Dora. We miss you already.