Our Sweet Bain

Last Thursday Alex and I found out that our sweet Bain was dying. For those of you who do not know Bain he is one of our dogs, he is a Mastiff.




Alex works with his dad Terry at his Vet Hospital and Alex had been taking Bain to work with him everday for about 2 weeks because Bain had a problem with his back legs. He is quite a big dog and very clumsy so we thought he had just sprained his ankle, but he started losing weight fast and was having a hard time walking.



Alex called me at work on Thursday to tell me we needed to discuss Bain's condition and that he wanted me to go to the Animal Clinic to talk with him. So I left work right away, somehow I already knew what he was going to tell me, but I didn't want to believe it. It was a very hard drive for me.

When I arrived at the clinic, I was a wreck. I saw Alex's face and I fell apart. Cris was there and she came in and hugged me and told me she was sorry but at this point I still didn't know what was wrong with Bain, I just wanted to talk to Terry so he could tell me what was going on.

Terry told me that our poor Bain had torn both his ACLs which was why he was walking incorrectly and dragging his feet on the cement causing his nails to bleed. Bain's bad back was the issue from the start, he had some deteriorated lumbar vertebrae in his lower back which was causing him pain. Bain had lost almost 30 pounds it seemed overnight! His muscles were deteriorating and he could not use his back legs.

Terry is the best Vet in Utah so I trust his opinion and he said basically Bain's condition would not get better. Alex and his father both agreed that there was no way he would live through any surgery because he had a gentic disease that was making him too weak. They explained that with all their experience with situations like this that it was worse to put the dog through so much torture just so we can keep him alive a little bit longer.


The following pictures are from the day Bain died, he was so skinny!


Finally I understood exactly what the consequences were and realized that Bain was in so much pain that he could never have a happy and pain free life. So the outcome of all that had happened was that Bain had to be put to sleep.

I told Alex that I wanted Bain to come back home to die with us by his side instead of at the hospital. So we brought Bain home with us and we were able to spend the last 45 minutes of his life together. Terry was kind enough to leave the hospital to put Bain to sleep in our backyard, Bain's favorite place.




I can't help but think if there was anything I could do to prevent this from happening, but Terry assured us that this was inevitable and that Bain couldn't have asked for a better life than what we were able to give him the last 2 & 1/2 years. So I can only be grateful for the time that we had with him and move on. I know this may seem very dramatic for some who do not understand how close you can become to a pet and how they can change your life, but they can and Bain did.