One day, Tucker did not want to eat his food which was extremely out of the ordinary for him. He was the kind of dog that if you didn’t get your hand out of the way when dropping his food in the bowl, you might lose a digit or two. He didn’t even want to eat a treat which was also very odd. He was very thirsty though and was drinking a lot of water. Soon after, he vomited all over the floor several times, so I called the vet to let them know what was happing. They told me to bring him in that morning. Once at the vet, they ran some tests on him including an ultrasound. While my vet wasn’t 100% sure of what he saw, he consulted with a specialist and got me an appointment immediately with that same specialist. I loaded Tucker into my Jeep and made the drive to Jacksonville from St. Augustine. When we arrived, they took him to the back right away. The specialty vet came out shortly after to let me know that they believed Tucker had a tumor that was causing a blockage at the base of his stomach where it meets his intenstines. The specialty vet gave me two options. One was doing an MRI to get a better idea if the tumor was operable or not. Two was taking him into surgery to go ahead look at the tumor. This option would allow him to remove it if it was in fact operable. I elected to have him operate immediately and to remove it if he could do so. After what felt like an eternity but in actuality it was probably only an hour or so, the specialty vet came out to tell me that the tumor was in both his stomach and his intestines. He stated that he could remove it but he could only give Tucker about 30 days and most of that would be recovering from surgery. That was not a quality of life that I wanted for him. The vet said that we could euthanize him and if it were his dog under the exact conditions, that’s what he himself would choose to do. I knew what I needed to do and I elected to put him down. The vet offered to wake him up so that I could say my final goodbye but I decided against that. If he was suffering right then, it would be selfish of me to have them wake him up just to put him right back to sleep. They allowed me to see him once they were finished. That’s the only time I was not right by one of my dog’s sides when they passed.