December 26, 2017
Giant schnauzers live 10-12 years. I’m on enough GS groups to know how rare it is for a GS to make 13, let alone 14, let alone over 14. And sometimes you see the “happy birthday” picture of those 13+ year old giant schnauzers, and they look ratty and miserable, and you wonder, they’re not dead, but are they truly alive? We agreed we’d never let that happen to Luna.
She’d been getting more and more fragile and shutting down for a while, but she still enjoyed her table scraps and running around (well, hobbling around) with Drax in the yard. But last night she had a bit of a bloody nose. Then this morning, she had it again. Then she got it a third time, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. Her lifelong vet made time to see her immediately, and when he examined her, the diagnosis was as easy for him to make as it was to see the trail of blood she left on the floor–a bleeding tumor, assumed to be cancerous, definitely would require lots of tests and invasive procedures, with no guarantee of success. And for a dog that is already outlived her life expectancy, what does “success” even mean? It was a heavy morning, but Michelle and I made the call.
She’d been full of life and fire since the day she came bounding (and barking) into our life, and that’s how I’ll always remember her. Life was a full-contact sport for her, and she had no off switch. She was a goofball and a handful and a fierce protector: 75 pounds of love and teeth. She never stopped feeling her duty was to protect the house, even at the end.
There’s an absence in the house now, and she will be missed.