Our battle with Bosco's hemangiosarcoma came to an end yesterday. He had been feeling ill with a fever of 106° F over the weekend. Their normal temperature is 101° to 102.5°F. So I went to work and raided the place of every antibiotic you can think of, IV fluids, IV catheter... It NEVER occurred to me to grab the euthanasia solution! He got IV fluids through the weekend and a whole pharmacy of medications. His gums returned to a nice healthy pink rather than the ghastly white that had been. He even started to eat baby food that comes in a jar, some ice cream and played with his squeaky ball. He even got up and was walking around. :-) His improvement was apparently his "last hurrah" which I have seen numerous times in terminal patients thoughtout the years. His gums were white yesterday morning and was not breathing normally. I got him into the car by myself. (Amazing what the body can do in an emergency situation.) We took only one radiograph of his chest ... just to see ... :-( About 95% of his chest cavity was tumors. At least five were larger than the size of my fist! There was so much cancer that his heart could not be seen because of all of the tumours. Maybe some involved his heart too. There was a tiny area of his lungs one inch square that appeared cancer free. Certainly that is not enough for a 100 pound dog! I believe that his cancer also infiltrated the intestines because he had black diarrhea yesterday morning. Black is an indication of severe bleeding and the blood has been digested before exiting the body. His type of cancer stems from the cells of blood vessels and there are blood vessels everywhere. He could have had a rupture of a tumor anywhere in his body. That Bosco's gums turned white again was a sign that his tumors were bleeding. That was another painful thing for him plus it made it even harder for him to breathe. Maybe his back pain was the cancer in the spine? Everything was so nice and normal just 3 weeks ago (radiographs and blood work). We even had a check up with his oncologist in August and he was more than delighted how well Bosco was doing! But ... one needs to have at least one billion cells change before the first change is seen on a radiograph. The hemangiosarcoma is also the fastest growing cancer in a dog. :-( I could not see him suffering any more although he never complained about anything I did for him! I called my Mom and told her what was going on and she too did not want this sweet dog to be in needless pain any longer. He was on a thick soft blanket, I gave him a kiss for every family member, told him I was sorry that it came to this. He got an anesthetic through his IV catheter. He still had the one I placed on the weekend. He didn't even need to get poked again. He went to sleep and then I gave him the injection to stop his heart. The guy I work with asked if I wanted him to put Bosco down. No. I needed to perform this final act of love and mercy for our dearest Bosco. Bosco was so trusting and he let me know through the look in his sweet eyes that it was OK and he was ready to leave his pain. :-( The dose is 1cc per 10 pounds of body weight. He died after he got a dose for someone only weighing 20 pounds. I did give him the full dose but for sure he was ready to go. Bosco will be cremated and we will get his ashes back in a few days. I e mailed Mike/Ima_Celery about what was going on and again yesterday what had happened. I don't think he has had time to check his e mails yet. The Internet situation in S. America can be iffy at times. Mike will be back in early October. Daisy is looking for Bosco. Bruno the cat, Bosco's best friend, knows something bad has happened and is lying on Bosco's bed all day. None of the cats had eaten yesterday either! We got his spleen out last September and while 80% of dogs die within one to two months of diagnosis, we were lucky ... did the 12 weeks of chemo and got to have another 11 months with him! About 6 years ago Bosco fathered a litter of 7 puppies. ALL have his loving friendly personality. We were so delighted with his puppies we put some of his "representatives" into a sperm bank. Perhaps later if we find a nice female GSD, she might have some Bosco puppies and his line will endure. That is far down in the future. We need to cope, somehow, with this totally unexpected turn of events. I gave myself a mega headache from crying yesterday and today. Drugs have dulled it a bit but not totally. My sincerest thanks to Semper, Heather and Bihai for their compassion and care during this ordeal! What wonderful people they are, and the rest of you Pond people, for such concern for someone you have never even met! Time to cry some more. :-( Chickadeedeedee

Eden is the winner! I counted all of the pots of plants that are indoors. There are 176 total...until I pot up the cuttings from 10 containers. :-) There are 11 pots and one cutting's container in the spare bedroom. 25 pots im my bedroom (the african violets have company), 10 pots in the vestibule, 14 pots and 5 cutting's containers in the diningroom, only one african violet in water in the kitchen, and 93 pots and 10 cutting's containers in the plant room. The frost yesterday morning did no damage to the few tender things in our yard. This morning was a few degrees warmer, but there was frost on my car's windows when we drove out to the local store for breakfast. Eden, I sure do get tired of tending all these plants. Before winter is over, and it is still too iffy to put them back out, I get to wondering "Why,why, do I do this?" I am so glad that that dreadful storm in New York missed Mary's place. Mary, I didn't tell you how glad I am that you had another woman to share the room with at the camp.It sounds like it ended up being a good experience. I still admire you for going through with it. T, you certainly beat me on the facial color. Mine is quite greenish-yellow on the left forehead. Looks jaundiced! I need to start wearing a helmet. Last night I reared up under the corner of the kitchen counter, when I was goofing off with Trubby. No harm done to me or the counter. :-) Our front lawn is covered with Honey locust pods, and more still on the tree. Sure wish I had known it would do that...I would have been more choosey what I planted there. It will have to stay, because it's shade is badly needed. The one in the side yard doesn't have pods. Whoopee! The Phal from Ei is putting up a 3rd flower stalk! And I am pretty sure the Slipper Orchid is putting on 3! Another Phal is adding a new one, also. I should be assured of lots of lovely orchids all winter. Our forecast is improving for the next while...rain and warmer temps.But I'm not sorry that I have brought all the tender stuff in. Now I need to set out all the potted hardy plants...but where oh where will I put them!!!??? and am I up to digging the holes? I think I will put the ninebark where the old compost pile was. It was sunny enough to grow winter squash, so the shrub should do well there, and the soil should be mellow and fertile. I am thinking there will be a fun time at Sue's today. Report all the happenings to us. Marian

Before this gets away, let me tell you that Benny Lopez belongs in every fragrant garden. It was wonderful, although I may have been the only person to sniff it. Many, many of the roses in the show were HTs and for some reason, not many people there expected roses to be fragrant. Yes, we did fly to California for the Convention- not to show but to hear the talks. We're different that way. Someday I'll tell you about the tough day we had on the way out, let's just say we got drained by unavoidable stuff. Then we got to see a bit of LA...chortle...traffic...and more traffic, and we mistimed our visit to the StageCoach Inn Rose garden, so we enjoyed it through the metal gate. About Stagecoach's roses- still in the shade approaching noon, really good bloom and bloom quality for that amount of shade, good bloom color too...but (easterners and southerners) you would not believe how dense the leaves, the totally healthy leaves, are on those plants. I have never seen such dense leaves on tea roses. Simply awesome. It was good to visit with the west coasters and to talk with some of the eastern folks we'd been out of touch with. In retrospect, next time we do something like this with good older rose talks, we need to have a hospitality room that night...for more good talking. And, yes, Larry got to ride along Rte 66. We even saw some wonderful restored autos driving alongside of us...but they were on the interstate a tenth of a mile away while we were bouncing along avoiding pot holes on 66. That might have squelched his urge to drive a to-be-restored Packard cross country on Rte 66 (you may snap you fingers appropriately).

Thanks for all your hard work Karen! Can't wait to read it in its entirety. Jodi-