The Vet Gave My Dog 20 Days, Then I Had to Make a Heartbreaking Decision

The day with my beloved Diesel started like any other—he slept in while I started the coffee and logged onto work. We went for our morning stroll and I came back to feed him, but when he didn’t immediately devour his bowl as he does every time, I knew something was off.

Making a mental note, I started monitoring his behavior throughout the day. He seemed like his normal self. But when dinner came along and my Chow Chow mix didn’t eat again, it cemented my husband’s and my concerns.

Diesel had been retching, his stomach bloated, and he looked uncomfortable. I couldn’t rest that night knowing something was off, prompting us to rush to the animal hospital at 10 p.m.

However, the night at the emergency vet didn’t come with immediate answers. Instead, I was given two possibilities: valley fever or cancer.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Only a few weeks earlier, Diesel, my fluffy and, albeit biased belief, cutest dog ever, had his regular vet visit. His tests and bloodwork came back healthy. No sign of concern.

The emergency vet told us Diesel’s symptoms sounded like valley fever, but he would still run other tests. That surprised us as new Arizona desert dwellers originally from the Northeast. We didn’t know anything about valley fever.

Valley fever is a dust-borne fungal infection commonly found in the Southwest. The American Kennel Club (AKC) reported dogs could breathe in the fungal spores, which can lead to severe illness. They might develop a respiratory infection. Symptoms include lethargy, coughing, fever, loss of appetite, weight loss, and weakness or lameness.

To rule out other possibilities, the vet took X-rays, which revealed something else entirely—a mass around Diesel’s heart base. He didn’t immediately say it was cancer, wanting to get the test results back first, but a week later, we got the call to confirm. It wasn’t valley fever. Our 12-year-old boy had cancer.

We followed up with our regular vet the next day where she talked us through this type of cancer—Hemangiosarcoma. Known as the “silent killer,” hemangiosarcoma is a highly invasive canine cancer that causes blood vessels to branch, fragment or rupture. Dogs often show no symptoms until the tumor grows large enough to rupture and spread, which is oftentimes too late to save the dog’s life.

About 300,000 dogs die because of hemangiosarcoma in the United States annually. This number represents between 5 and 7 percent of the nearly 6 million dogs diagnosed with cancer each year.

Diesel’s mass grew so large it started to push on his trachea, causing his retching. The vet gave him 20 days left to live, the average time she said she sees dogs last with this type of cancer.

Tears immediately streamed down my face. How could this be? What have I missed? We give him all the right...