Goodbye to Kaara

This is probably not the place to pour out our feelings, I may have mentioned in earlier blogs that our lovely dog Kaara was diagnosed last year with TCell Lymphoma, apparently there are two types and unfortunately the type Kaara had was incurable. However, we were referred to the University of Liverpool Vetinary Hospital for Small Animals. It is an absolutely amazing place and your pets large of small are treated like proper patients. Kaara started her chemo treatment last June (2012. She was put on a 25 week course which involved weekly visits to the hospital and medication given at home. She went into remission after the first week and we were absolutely amazed at her response even the vets were to. Kaara finished her course in January 2013 and we were then to go for monthly check ups to monitor her progress. We returned to Liverpool Vetinary on the 14th Feb 2013, really positive as Kaara was in the perfect health despite her illness, in fact they told us she was a model patient and everything they did to her she just accepted. On this day we left her for half an hour while they checked her over and when they called us back in it was to tells that it was back but in another place. The lump they found was very small so they were hopeful to give her another shot at the treatment she had had before. (I must point out that at this point our Pet Plan funds had run out and we were now facing bills for her treatment. We were back to weekly visits which involved mainly me taking her each week, I took a day off from work each week to do this in some cases she had to stay for the day so while hubby worked close by he picked her up at the end of the day and I went in to work. Despite different treatment the lump seemed not to be responding although it wasn't getting any bigger. Then she started to have collapsing episodes, they though it may be her heart but the monitor did not show up anything although they could hear an irregular beat. We started a two week course of treatment but she seemed to really be struggling with this one and the collapsing episodes were getting worse especially when she had the chemo tablets which we were now giving her at home. A week ago this Friday gone, Kaara collapsed and could not get up, we called our local vet as that was the nearest and they told us to bring her in as soon as the opened. Suffice to say she walked in quite happily wagging her tail and greeting everyone. The nurses call her "The Famous Kaara" as her file is so thick and all the reports are copied back to them from Liverpool Uni so they know whats going on. Her file is also like a book there to. The vet we saw was the one that had diagnosed her last year and whilst everyone was amazed at how well she had done, they felt the time had come. Sadly we had to let Kaara go and this was the worst thing we have had to do, we had come a long way but deep down in our hearts we new it could not go on forever. Now Kaara is remembered with love although it is hard at the moment to come home and she is not there to great us, but we are getting there. Apologies for the sad tail, but I felt I needed to talk about it to strangers as it is difficult to talk to each other just now as it is still upsetting. Here are some photo's of Kaara taken at various times in our life with her.