We almost lost Koda last week due to acute pancreatitis.
He's back home since Sunday and as active as always!
But he's taking a lot of medications, and he has to soon remove his spleen (w/ a golf ball sized tumour), and with his age the surgery is very risky, but needed 
.
He's turning 15 this September.
I never posted this publically: I take a photo per day with Koda. I have more than 5000 daily Koda photos :D
Left: 1st day with Koda, 15/11/2009.
Right: 24/04/2024.
Unfortunately, worrying about money is necessary for dog longevity. Because then you can always pay for the best food and treatment.
For example, for the 4 days that he spent in intensive care, it cost me only €289 here in Portugal's countryside.
In Denmark these same 4 days would have cost me approximately 72000 DKK ~ €9653 and the treatment would be much worse (there's a vet culture there of saying "if the dog is already too old, it's better to euthanize").
I moved out at the perfect time.
@alfredbaudisch sorry to hear. Our Nell died 2 years ago from lymphoma, and 6 months before her spleen failed too - she recovered in 10 days from surgery and was a fighter to the end. It cost a lot but was absolutely worth every penny
@tanepiper very sorry to hear about that. She looked like a very good girl 
.
And I agree with you, every second that we can make them more comfortable, it's worth everything.
@alfredbaudisch Thanks, of course it hurts but a year later almost exactly we had puppies with our other dog and now we have two again - one on the left is Nell and Grace, and now we have Grace and Astra (Polish Hunting Spaniels)
@tanepiper they are irreplaceable, but having other dogs indeed help.
When I lost my female Dachshund, Mahi, in December, the vet said "you still have Koda, he will help you go through Mahi's loss" and at first I got a bit angry with the vet - "one cannot replace another!", but she was actually right.
@alfredbaudisch We're part of our breeds future, as it's a small breed and we worked hard and spent a lot of money to make sure we had all the right tests done, and took time to find the right male - it ended up with us driving to the middle of Poland, 2 days before Christmas, in a replacement small car as ours was in the garage being repaired on the *hope* we got the timing right. We say Astra is the €10k dog, but it was absolutely worth it https://www.instagram.com/zetacentauri_psm/ (we documented it all)
@alfredbaudisch The name comes from Nell, it was her birth name - so it's the legacy she carries on - never replaced, but always part of what we're doing.
@tanepiper this is really cool. What a nice work!
Also lovely 1 year side by side here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3yu5tLI89S/?img_index=1 they are so beautiful.
@alfredbaudisch I'm not going to lie - yes they are, and they all are with the right families (which was also hard work - we had one family who visited 3 times - the third time they showed themselves for who they really were and we told them they couldn't have one) - they also all came out around 350g each - a very consistent little of 6 - couldn't have asked for a better first time I think. Was hard work though.