I had just driven up to the house this evening from a vet run to Helena when Alayne came out the back door. She was in tears. "Sugar just died! She’s dead!," she kept saying. I couldn’t believe it. We’d only had this blind Springer Spaniel for a few months, and she seemed to be in great health. It was 5:45 p.m. I raced into the house.
Sugar was keeled over on the dining floor, right by her food bowl. Alayne was in shock because it had happened so suddenly, just a couple of minutes before. Alayne had been in the middle of feeding the dogs their dinner. She had gone over to the living room to help Sugar off her cot and lead her into the dining room to her food bowl. Mealtime was the best part of the day for Sugar. Knowing dinner was coming, as usual she was wagging her little tail and wiggling with delight. She got to the food bowl, stood there for a second, and then collapsed on the floor. No struggle, no gasps, no distress. Just gone. In an instant.
I checked for any visual response. There wasn’t any. I couldn’t find a pulse. Alayne handed me the stethoscope to listen for a heartbeat. Nothing.
We sat there by her body for a while, just stunned. Sugar looked like she always did, but there was no life in her.
We called our vet in Helena, Dr. Brenda Culver, and asked what could have happened. She suspects, as did we, that Sugar suffered a heart attack. All the signs point to that as the cause.
Alayne and I picked up Sugar and carried her back to her cot. We needed to see her there, one last time, the same way she spent every day here. She loved that cot in the living room. The photos you see in this post we took soon after she arrived at the ranch. She had discovered that cot on her first day and this became her spot. There was no better place. You can read her original story here.
Goodbye, you sweet old Spaniel.
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