Goodbye our Sweet Kisses

On Friday, June 3, 2011 we made the gut-wrenching decision to euthanize Kisses.  He was 17 years, 5 mos. old.  In the last 2 mos. his quality of life had deteriorated quite a bit.  He was almost completely blind, getting very arthritic, not having fun anymore and had a bout with infection that sent his kidney values off the chart.  Although he recovered fairly well from the kidney and infection episode, the last 3 days of his life he developed excruciating pain (most likely due to bone destruction in his mouth from the cancer radiation)  The pain was uncontrollable, even with pain injections and heavy doses of narcotics.  We knew it was his time to go and took him in about midnight.  The vet was very sweet and gentle; she explained the procedure (we'd never been through that), and she make us a paw print to take home.  The tears flowed, and still flow today, but we knew we had done the right thing for Kisses.  His body was shipped to CO State University for necropsy.