Our beloved Goshen - Rest in Peace

Goshen laughing, one week before she passed away

We have unexpectedly lost our precious Goshen. I have been crying comfortless for days and it is not until now that I can gather myself to write about it. Saturday morning she was happy as usual and we had planned to go and visit Yoram's mother in Karmiel. For some reason, I did not feel like going, and Yoram left alone with the kids just before lunch. I cannot say if that was intuition or destiny, or just pure coincidence, but I am so happy that I stayed at home, because right after they had left I noticed that Goshen was acting strangely. She went out and laid alone in the garden and I went out and called her up on the porch, and then I noticed that she was wobbling and could not stand up properly. I immediately checked her and noticed that her gums were completely pale and that she was breathing heavily. She did not even want to eat a chicken heart, but she did drink some water. I called Yoram and explained the situation and they decided to come home earlier than planned. I feared some kind of poisoning, but could not figure out what that could be.

When Yoram came home she was not any better and we tried to reach our vet, but he was off duty and he recommended us to go to a clinic in Haifa that backs him up when he is gone. We had to carry out a very weak Goshen to the car and we drove there. The young vet on duty started to examine her and took blood samples, but the blood initially seemed OK. Her tummy was not hard or swollen either, so we could not explain her shock state. Not until she examined her tummy with ultrasound, she could see something suspicious on her spleen, some liquid accumulation. We also took a few x-ray shoots on her, which confirmed the same. By now, a new blood sample revealed that she was actually loosing blood, and the accumulation in her tummy was just that, a big hemorrhage. The young vet called in the head vet of the clinic, who explained the condition and prognosis. He said that there was a 70% risk that the hemorrhage was caused by a tumor on the spleen. This type of cancer is called Hemangiosarcoma and it is very common on some larger breeds, and German Shepherd in particular. It is a blood-fed type of tumor that rarely is discovered until it suddenly bursts and causes a sudden death from inner bleeding. What he could have done was to open her and remove the spleen and send it to biopsy, but since Hemangiosarcoma is a malign type of cancer, and also very metastatic, the risk that it had already spread to other tissues was very high. Besides that, Goshen was already too anemic to safely be put under general anesthesia, so although it was excruciatingly painful, we understood that we had reached the end of her life.

I have never seen Yoram cry before, but now he broke down like a child, and so did I. Gal was also with us, and at first I don't think that he understood the reality in what was going on, but when he did he cried as well. I was sitting face to face with Goshen when she got the sedative and the anesthetic that put her to sleep and I can swear that I saw peace in her eyes, acceptance and contentment. She was OK with passing on and satisfied with her life. No fear or stress, or signs of disagreement. Although I found it sad that this did not happen with our regular vet, who has known Goshen all her life, I am also grateful that it was on a Saturday and we were home and could take care of her. I cannot even begin to imagine how it would have felt to come home from work to a dead dog. Now she had company during her last day in life.

We put Goshen back in the car and drove home. Yoram went to the neighbor and borrowed some shovels and I went in and took Barak out. He smelled me differently already in the house and when I opened the backdoor to the car, he saw Goshen and smelled her. He jumped up into the car and sat down on her, just as if he was claiming her for the last time. Then he jumped back out and looked away as if that was enough. We put him back in the house and drove out into the fields to a spot that Yoram had thought of as suitable.

Goshen's last resting place

We laid her down in front of two small trees that are standing solely on a small hilltop, viewing out over the Jezreel valley. We covered her with rocks to prevent the jackals from digging her up and we put some flowers. I opened a bottle of wine and we toasted her and thanked her for our time together, and then we all went home to a painfully empty house. Everybody cried themselves to sleep and the kids were calling her name in their sleep all night...

Goshen's wonderful view over the valley