A Dog's Life - Introducing Chewie

How to you summarize the life of a dog into some blog posts? If you are like me, your dog is or was such a integral part of your life that defining his life means defining your own.

I write this as my beloved Chihuahua Chewie is dying. We don't know exactly what he has but the vets suspect it is a brain tumor although it could be a degenerative brain disease.

To find out definitively, we'd have to fly him down to Seattle from Alaska where we now live for an MRI (there are no pet MRI's being done in this state). Then we could get an MRI done to confirm what is going on in his brain. Then we'd have to make the decision about operating or not because if you go as far as the MRI, you probably will want to operate if it is possible. But at his age (estimated at between 15-20 years), it is risky to do surgery and even with surgery, the chances of death during or right after the procedure are pretty high.

So $7500 dollars later, you still may have a dead dog who has endured the stress of travel, tests and surgery. I've opted to provide Chewie with hospice care at home.


I am writing this blog to document the last days, weeks or months of his life and to explain what I've been doing to keep him as comfortable as possible. I'll discuss my decision not to put him down right now. I'll go into the medications and natural remedies I'm giving him. I hope this information is helpful to somebody out there with a sick or dying dog.

I wish I had started this blog earlier so I could remember everything in chronological order over the last several months. But I'll do my best to both piece together his condition as well as his life overall.