Lazy day for the boy

Harvey's sleeping a lot today. I think it's because it's too cold outside to do much else and we don't have enough snow on the ground to make romping in it worth the effort quite yet.

He ate very well at breakfast and is certainly alert enough to bark at the neighbors and Rusty the Beagle, but I find I'm seeing all sorts of dire symptoms in the simplest of behaviors. Things Harvey's done his entire adult life - leaving a little food in his bowl, asking to take his naps in the bedroom away from the other dogs - now are causing me to over-analyze those behaviors, looking for any sign that he's not feeling well.

I don't want this cancer to turn me into a hovering doggy mom because I know Harvey would wonder why I'm constantly checking his gums, or his breathing, or his heart rate .......... He certainly doesn't need the stress of my overprotectiveness.

We're doing all we can now to give him the best chance of holding off this cancer. Perhaps - if we're fortunate, to even be one of the rare few who experience a remission - so I'm trying to not let him see me worry. We're so bonded to each other that he'd certainly pick up on it.

Still, this awful disease touches every part of our day and is always there, quietly whispering in my ear that it intends to take my boy from me. It makes it difficult to just enjoy our usual routines, since the thoughts are always present......"How many more cuddle times will we have like this?", "He ate well this meal, will he have an appetite at his next meal?", "Does the cough (sneeze, scratch, lick) mean something is happening that I need to get on top of, or is it no different that the thousand other times he's coughed (sneezed, scratched, licked) at any other time in his life?"

"Make as many happy memories as possible", I've been told. But, right now, that seems like giving in to some inevitable fate that I'm not ready to acknowledge, for fear that it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and steal whatever chance we have at fighting this thing, possibly winning that elusive remission that few other dogs have experienced. I know those remissions are possible, because I've talked with other pet-parents whose hemangiosarcoma dogs have survived long past initial prognosis. A few have survived, and thrived, as long as 2, 3 even 6 years post-diagnosis. Very, very rare, but my boy is an odds-beater from way back.

So, we're just trying to keep the day to day as normal as possible. Yet, the HSA always there, just whispering, reminding me that it's waiting, biding it's time .................