Koda

Two days ago Aaron went for a horseback ride and took Koda with him like he always does.

When Aaron got home from his ride he said that Koda was really overheated and wouldn't even walk.....

We filled up his pool and wet him down and gave him lots of water to drink, but nothing seemed to help.

I knew something was really wrong....

I started to look all over him to see if he got bit by anything or to see if there was an injury we weren't seeing.....

When I lifted his hind leg I saw two fang marks and a dark red trail of blood under the skin that went to his abdomen and made a big pool of blood under the skin there.

Koda had been bit by a rattlesnake.

It was so horrible. He just laid there and wouldn't move, his body would tremble uncontrollably, he would go to the bathroom all over himself and then he started to bleed from his rectum.

We called a friend that is a vet and he told us a couple things we could try, but mostly we just had to wait and see if he would make it or not.

By late that afternoon, we thought he was doing a little better. He tried to get up a couple of times, and he would lift his head and wag his tail every now and then. We were so happy and couldn't believe he was going to pull through. Koda has been run over by a quad, and had his leg cut open where he needed stitches. He tried to play with a porcupine once and learned the hard way that porcupines don't like to play with dogs. Each time, even though a couple of them he probably shouldn't have lived, he pulled through.

We decided we were going to make his middle name Lucky.

The next morning he seemed to be stable. He lifted his head a couple times and the swelling had gone down a lot. Logan went out and sat with him before school and Koda moved his paw towards Logan until Logan held it. Then he just laid there with Logan for quite a while. It was so sweet.

That afternoon when I got home with the kids from school, I went out back and I knew Koda had taken a turn for the worse. He looked horrible. He wouldn't even pick up his head. I called Aaron at work and asked him to come home because I thought Koda was dying. He hurried home and we drove Koda over to our friends house that is a vet. He and another vet looked him over and told us that there wasn't anything else we could do for him and that he was in a lot of pain and death was certain to come. He was bleeding internally and was actually getting blood clots that were coming to the surface of his skin and bursting.

It was one of the most terrible moments of my life.

I knew what we had to do, I just couldn't believe that our sweet, HYPER, slobbery Koda wouldn't be there with us anymore.

Poor Colton was there when the vet gave us the news and he and I just hugged Koda and cried together.

We gave Koda some pain meds to make it home so the other kids could say goodbye, and then we all hugged Koda and told him how much we loved him. It was very emotional for all of us. Colton held him in his lap while he fell asleep for the last time.

We loved Koda so much. He was definitely one of our family and we can't wait to see him again in the next life. We're sure he's chewing up all the Heavenly landscaping, and destroying any heavenly chew toys he's given (even ones that say they can't be destroyed), and sliming all the angels with his excessive amount of slobber that he seemed to have a bottomless supply of.

We will all miss you, Koda.

We love you.