Sir Fig Newton Bernard Smith – that is my damned old dog’s official AKC registered name.

Newton, as he known, was born on April 1st 2001 to a breeder in Georgia, he is indeed an April fool’s joke alright. He has grown into a horrible example of what a Boston terrier should be. That matters little to Bride and I because that is THE MOST lovable dog in the world. He is not well behaved, even though he received over 10 weeks of obedience training when he was a puppy. I think what happened was that he spent that time training Bride because she has doted on that dog since we got him. Bride and I were together 12 years before she was able to convince me to get a dog, we were and still are cat people.

We were visiting some friend’s parents and they had a Boston, Cookie was only about 10 pounds, max. Well after a couple of days Cookie kinda grew on me and I think Bride picked up on that. I did say that at that time “it can’t be a “cookie”, it has to be a Newton” from the fig newton commercials that were popular at that time. I later learned of an area outside Boston Massachusetts called Newton, a well to do area no less. Well after the casual conversations about names for a dog the next thing ya know she is working on me about getting a dog like Cookie, only not a Cookie, a Newton. After some pretty heavy lifting on Brides part she convinced me. For me I was looking forward to a tiny little dog getting his ass kicked by the 24 pound cat we had at the time. So sue me, I thought that would be fun to watch, get over it. That is when the hunt started, she wanted a perfect specimen, nothing less than an AKC dog would do. Me, I could care less, mutts will love ya just as much so it really did not matter to me, other than I got scared that we were going to spend of fortune on an “AKC” dog.

Well after searching high and low she found a place in Georgia and her and her friend go trucking up the road to Georgia to look at him. Bride assured me that her friend would not let her get a dog that was not the perfect specimen. Hahahaha, that makes me laugh thinking back on it. Well they get there and this puppy just ran over and jumping into Brides arms, it was over right then and there. All the discussion of getting the perfect dog was gone, he was 8 pounds and 8 weeks old and they bonded immediately. I am pretty sure he could have weighed 20 pounds and she would have brought that little lover puppy home. There was no way her friend could have ever convinced Bride to listen to the very reason bride asked her to tell her. Eight pounds in eight weeks, for a dog that is supposed to be only 12 pounds – yeah right. For those who know Newton you know – he grew to be a 40+ pound Boston Terrier, that was not a typo, forty plus pounds.

Since that day Newton has lead an idyllic life, he has been subjugated by EVERY cat we have had since that time, and there have been 5. Even the brothers’ Darryl, as kittens, subjugated him in just a few minutes. He has never attacked any of them, luckily because his jaw is similar to those of a pit-bull and he could have eaten all of them at any time he really wanted to. As a puppy, before the official registration process, his name grew from just Newton to the long goofy name of Sir Fig Newton Bernard Smith. I thought it would be hilarious that if one of his siblings were to ever go on to greatness in the AKC world that they would have a brother with that name, it sounds kind of regal I think and I like it.

Recently he began to lose a little weight, very gradually but after a while it became noticeable. We have been feeding him weight management from Iams forever, that was more me holding onto the hope that someday he would weigh only 12 pounds. After some trips to the vet’s we found he had pancreatitis, so we had that to deal with. Medications and nearly zero fat allowed in the diet while he was recovering. The doc was not sure if all the blood numbers were accurate as the pancreatitis could be throwing them off. After he recovered from that it was back to see the doc again, the good news was the pancreatitis was OK but the liver function numbers were not great.

More medications and we were going to take a look in a month, when he had finished that line of medication. Well back we go and the numbers were going in the wrong direction. The Doc was not sure what was going on so she wanted to schedule an ultrasound, which we did. Bride went to Texas on vacation and I went to Vegas for work and when I got back I took the boy up to see them again. They do not have the ultrasound machine but a traveling Vet does and he was scheduled to come in and preform the test. I got a call later that afternoon from the Doc, who started in with the results. I stopped her and told her I would come on up and see her.

I knew that is was not good news by the sound of her voice and did not enjoy the ride to her office or the wait in the waiting room. She brought him into the examination room and he was his normally self, jumping around and giving Daddy the love. She got right to it and it was not good news at all. She started out telling me that Newton had stones in his kidney, gall bladder and bladder. She could not tell me how long he had them but she did say that they do not appear to be bothering him. I was giving him the love while she was describing what was going on and it was all I could do not to cry, I knew that was not the worst of it. Newton was amusing looking as his right side and under his belly were shaved, I teased him about being cold.

Then the Doc went on to tell me that he had a mass in his liver that was half the size of his liver. She went on to describe how a biopsy would allow them to determine if it was cancerous. Bride and I had already decided we would never torture one of our pets with kemo and radiation. Then she went on to say that the tumor was inoperable anyway. She told me we were going to keep him on Denamarin, a medication that improves liver function as much as possible. She also went on to tell me that he could be fine with less than one quarter of his liver functioning, I was surprised by that. She also went on to tell me some of the symptoms of when the liver starts to fail and told me that at that point we needed to talk again and make some new choices. Seemed like an odd way to put it, we both knew we were talking about euthanizing our boy.

I am crying right now writing this, just like I was in her office. I dread the day but we refuse to torture our animals to keep them around for us to be happy. This is not new territory for me, I have had to put two cats to sleep that were some of my best friends. It is the hardest thing a pet owner can do and I cried like a baby for days when each of their days came. The Doc did not really give me a timeline, suppose she couldn’t really because who knows how long that tumor had been growing in his liver. She just told me of some of the symptoms to watch out for. That dog has lead an great life and I will cherish all the time I have left with him and I will miss him when he is gone.