We were playing in the backyard, Scout, C and I, when C was the first to notice that Scout’s nose was bleeding, not a lot, just a trickle.
At first, I thought it might be a bad allergic reaction, but it didn’t stop. Maybe there’s something stuck up his nose? He does sniff everything and everywhere. We looked and looked but didn’t see anything, maybe it was lodged deep in the nose and we could not see it?
Ms J took him to our vet the next day. The staff at the vet’s office first also thought that it must be something lodged in the nose, a porcupine quill ? They used a specialized device to check his nose and didn’t see anything up there, but they did see that his blood was not clotting.
This is somewhat unusual for a 10 month old dog, but it is a symptom of having ingested rat poison. We didn’t see him eat anything that might have been killed by poison, such as a dead squirrel or mouse. The antidote for a dog who has eaten rat poison is a massive dose of vitamin K, which helps to clot the blood. This didn’t work. Besides he would have had to eaten ten pounds of poison to cause this lack of clotting, but at least that could be ruled out.
Perhaps he had a genetic disorder, such as hemophilia? A treatment of Prednisone would help with that. If it worked it would indicate that he was a hemophiliac, which is manageable with a variety of drugs, but that didn’t work either.
A tick bite ? Some ticks can cause this type of symptom. A blood test did not indicate a tick borne illness. A treatment of antibiotics was tried anyway just to be sure, but it didn’t help.
So they tried an ultrasound. That’s when they saw the tumor that is eating away his spleen. He just cant clean the blood and make the platelets to help clot normally. There’s not much to do to stop it.
One of the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is tell our eight year old son that his dog was going to die soon. We won’t be able to take him to the beach and see him jump in the waves this Summer. We won’t be able to ride bikes with him running along beside us wondering what those strange wheeled things were. I had thought that C and Scout would grow up together, but that’s not going to happen.
So we took him home.
For the next few days he’ll eat his favorite foods.
He’ll sit in the sun in the backyard. He’ll sleep on our bed if he wants to. He can sit in his favorite spot in the garden.
Maybe we’ll play tug-of-war with his blanket.
I’ll scratch his ear as long as he wants me to. 
And then we’ll have to say goodbye.
He’s been the smartest, happiest, most good natured dog. He loves meeting new people and he especially loves kids. He loves going to pick up C from school, seeing all the kids run around, getting a lot of attention from the kids who wanted to pet him. He loves meeting other dogs too, hoping they will want to play with him. He just wanted to be friends with everyone. The best dog I’ve ever had. And he’s only 10 months old.
Mr. C's Dad 