Price Family Shoutouts: Oscar 12-1999 to 4-4-12

I wonder how we get so emotionally attached to a pet, and especially one that is as peculiar as Oscar was. In late January, Oscar's "mass" started to come back as little golf ball size lumps on his side. It was really rather sudden. And then a few weeks after that, it was as if those small masses found a blood supply and manifested into something that was hell bent on overtaking him. We took him for a consultation and the vet said we could do surgery. It was over 3 weeks before we could actually schedule a date for the surgery and in that time the mass had overtaken the whole side of Oscar's body, including the muscle. Oscar was very uncomfortable and had to wear the cone of shame most all of the time. I think his skin itched a lot from the rapid expansion. On the day of his 2nd surgery, I did not even get back home before they called me and said that they did not have the means to remove a mass of that proportion and that we would have to get a surgeon to look at it and they most likely would still not be able to do anything, and if they did, we would need to commit to chemo as this was most certainly malignant. The vet told me that it would require extensive skin removal and months of bandaging and be a "bloody mess" and "inhumane" and that a lot of time older dogs tended to give up the fight. We were sent home with pain medicine and some anti-steroidal spray and told to come back when he stopped eating and drinking. I was okay with this if it meant he might have some level of comfort, but really wanted his quality of life to be better and was disheartened about the surgical failure. But we still had our dog, right? But about 10 days later, his side abscessed, and it went down hill from there.

Shane brought Oscar home from work in January of 2000. He was about 2 months old and had been found in the rain by a coworker who could not keep him. Shane had a Polaroid taken that day holding the dog like a child and wrapped in his flannel shirt. I don't think that not taking him was ever an option. The rain storm would apparently scar the dog for life as he started to tremble when it thundered within 100 miles of us and would hop in the bed or curl around my feet at the computer or in the kitchen while I cooked. Frankly, Oscar was a big ole baby. He peed lie a girl, ran like a deer, thought he was a 80lb lap dog and was afraid of most everything.

One of my favorite Oscar memories is when he was only about 4 months old and I heard him violently barking outside and I ran out to see what was going on and find Oscar butt in air and head to the ground letting a butterfly know he meant business. The butterfly just sat there fluttering it's wings until I physically removed the dog.

I have slept with this dog and 2 others for the better part of 12 years and held Oscar in my lap as we painted the house. For the past 8 months with Shane being gone, I was the alpha, and Oscar diligently came to sleep beside my bed, rather than the one Shane typically sleeps in. He was a good boy.

We have spent 12 years escorting Oscar through our house because of some unseen force that only he knew. On many nights, just as we would get settled in bed, you could hear Oscar crying because he couldn't get to the bedroom without passing through the edge of the hallway. So we would reluctantly get up and coax him around the corner were he would jauntily walk on to the bedroom. Never ever walk through the hallway, Never walk through the kitchen/hallway door. Only sometimes walk through the dining room -all other occassions, tremble uncontrollably until someone came to the rescue.

It has been boring without him.