Echo, would you like mustard and relish with that?

When Echo was an adolescent, I enrolled her in agility classes to burn off some of that excess energy and give her a bonding experience. She was very fast, extremely smart, and completely intolerable to all the other dogs. She would bark at them when they made mistakes. She didn't want to wait her turn to do the course. The hardest agility move for her was where she was required to lie down and stay in one place for 3 seconds. The training reward in the class was small pieces of hot dog, which we humans held in our mouths, (because our hands had to be free for gesturing to our dog), and doled out when the dog completed a move successfully.

I remembered this yesterday, and though she hadn't eaten much of anything for 36 hours, she perked up at the smell of Nathan's franks and ate a bowlful of small pieces. She even kept most of it down for about 18 hours. When we got up early this morning to take Bill to the airport, she upped a little undigested hot dog, but most of it stayed in her. But this also tells us that her digestion is slowing way down, and we're becoming more convinced that we're dealing with a tumor, not Lepto.

We still need to know whether it is Lepto (or it could be Lepto AND a tumor), because it is a contagious disease that could transmit to us. If the test result is positive, Bill and I will have to take a course of doxycycline ourselves.

Today, the only thing she would eat was a bowl of cooked, crumbled hamburger meat. But she's drinking clean water again out of her bowl in the house, and she went for a slow, short walk up the back hillside this afternoon. She's sleeping comfortably on the couch now (she can still get up and down on her own).

I suppose the question is "how long am I going to let this go on?" Every time I think she's a goner, she perks up, wants to go outside, or eats something. She is still responsive to us, alert most of the time, wagging her tail when we speak to her. She's trying her best, and I'm not ready to give up on her as long as she isn't in pain and exhibits normal dog behavior.

Bill said his goodbyes this morning and told me he'd trust my judgment, if I thought she needed to be put gently to sleep at some point this week. She hasn't given up, so I'm not going to give up on her either. I'm not there yet.