Sarah Laurel: Tribute to Leo

Our dog Leo died suddenly on Friday...

He threw up his food inside Friday morning so I sent him outside and didn't realize until about 2 hours later that he was still out there, so I went to check on him and saw him still throwing up which was a little unusual.. and then he just laid out there for a long time.. so I eventually went out there with his water bowl, some ice cubes, and a treat and he looked up at me with the weirdest expression.. Leo has the cutest puppy face and always looks happy and excited.. but the face I saw was severe pain.. I tried to give him some ice, but he wouldn't eat it. He wouldn't move and could barely open his eyes.. I could tell he was in so much pain so I texted my dad and Carly and said "Leo looks like he's dying" and sent them a picture.

Long story short, we waited for my mom to come home from work with the truck, lifted Leo into the back, and drove to the animal hospital about 5 min away. I sat in the back seat looking out the window at him the whole way there and felt so sick to my stomach because he looked so much worse already! His tongue was out of his mouth, he was barely breathing, he had a blank expression on his face, and his arm started seizing.. When we got there, the nurse and doctor ran out and said they could tell by his breathing and his white gums that he was slipping away fast. They rushed him inside while I sat in the office in shock..

What just happened?! how could he be dying this fast?! Amanda, Chase, and Jackson came a few minutes later because I had told them it didn't sound good.. and about 3 minutes after that, the doctor came in and told us his heart stopped. He was gone. We all cried together for a long time, and later the doctor came and told us the only explanation for his death was a ruptured tumor near his heart which is apparently common in golden retrievers. They said that nothing else could have killed him that fast.. which made us feel a little better in a way because we had no idea he had a tumor and they said even if we had come in sooner, they probably wouldn't have been able to save him. :'(

We miss our sweet baby so much and our house feels so empty without him.

My sister Carly did a great post about her memories of Leo on her blog here, so I wasn't going to do one, but I want to write down my own thoughts about him.

So first of all, the back story..

For years after our family moved to Arizona, my sisters and I really wanted a dog. We would beg our parents for a dog almost every day and our dad would say things like "If you all get along every single day this month, THEN we can get a dog," but we kept failing and he wouldn't let us get one until we really worked for it. Finally after a few years, I think my dad also really wanted a dog because he still made us do the same thing: get along for a month, but now when we messed up, he let it slide every time and finally told us we could just get a dog. :)

So Carly, being the dog expert in the fam, researched golden retrievers for sale in our area and on a Saturday, my mom took us 4 girls to look at puppies for sale.

The first place we went had the cutest dog-- a BIG golden puppy with very big parents. He was awesome, but for some reason, he just didn't fit into our family and none of us really felt like he was the one.

The second place we went was a farm in Queen Creek with the CUTEST litter of tiny little puppies! They were adorable!! There were two girls and two boys. Carly, Ashley, and I knew right away which one we wanted.. the bigger boy puppy. We wanted a golden retriever named Jersey for years, and this was him. He was a perfect dog. Amanda was holding his brother who was so cute and had the cutest face! She begged us to get that one instead, but we really wanted Jersey because we wanted the bigger dog and the brother was the runt of the family. He was tiny!

After not being able to pick between the two for the longest time, we finally decided we wanted Jersey, but we couldn't leave without taking his cute little brother too so we called my dad for approval and he said we could get both dogs!! My parents bought Jersey and I bought Leo (Amanda convinced me to pay for him with my own money, saying she'd pay me back half "someday" but never did so he was basically my dog the whole time :))

We decided on the name Jersey years before even getting a dog, but now that we had 2, we had no idea what to name our little runt puppy! We wanted something sweet and cute to match his personality.. so my mom suggested Leopold-- Leo for short. It was perfect.

Leo was the sweetest dog. When I think back on all our memories of Leo, I realize just how much joy he brought to our family. Jersey is still our perfect golden. He's tough, he plays fetch, he heels on walks, he obeys commands, etc. but Leo was this adorable, cuddly, crazy, disobedient little puppy his whole life who made us laugh every day. They were so similar, but so different, and our family wouldn't have been complete without both of them.

Here's some pictures of our sweet Leo bug.