In Memory of my little TEXAROO!!

In order to keep from totally loosing it and shorting out my computer from all the tears that I am already shedding just thinking about posting this, I am going to resort to using the e-mail that Scott sent to his parents about our little TEX!

A little background info: Last Wednesday, I took Tex to the vet because he was very slow moving and just wasn't himself. After blood work, a pain shot, 3 prescriptions, and an IV of fluid we returned home. Tex had some abnormal bruising pattern and his Red Blood Cells and White Blood Cell count were VERY low. He had some bruising on his front leg, both back legs, and his mouth was bleeding. He had a fever and had lost 4 pounds since March. He began to look a little better has the weekend approached. However, we brought him in house last night and he looked horrible. He looked like he had lost more weight and the bruising had spread...So, I am going to let Scott's e-mail take over from here.....

Scott's e-mail to his family:
Unfortunately we had to have Tex laid down to rest last night. Yesterday evening we looked him over and his bruising looked absolutely awful and had spread basically all over his bottom half. His legs were really swollen and it was obvious he hadn't been eating or drinking anything. He barely had the strength to walk. I talked to Courtney Richardson's dad (one of Scott's VB players) who is a vet and he told me I definitely needed to take him to the 24 Hour vet clinic place on Calder Rd. and 45 which he recommended as the best around. The vet there did thorough blood work and concluded that Tex had a genetic autoimmune disease. His red blood cell and white blood cell count were extremely low and his platelets were 0%. Basically his blood could no longer clot and that is why he had all the bruising and swollen legs. I asked if there was anything we could do and he said we could do a blood transfusion, give him steroids, and tons of other drugs but he said he still thought he was only going to have about a 10-15% chance even with all of that and he recommended I had him put to rest so I did. I asked him about just letting him pass away at home and he said that he thought with his present state that he was probably going to die within 1-3 days anyways and it would be a ton more painful for him because he was about to have organ failure. The whole thing is crazy because Tex was perfectly healthy a little over a week ago, but the vet said that these autoimmune diseases can move extremely fast and once your body starts fighting itself it goes downhill very fast.
It's pretty tough on us, we've had Tex for 5.5 years and we got him right after we got engaged. He's been at both our houses, saw both our kids when we brought them home the first time, and ran who knows how many miles with me around different neighborhoods. I'll probably try to explain it to Cooper this afternoon, but I doubt he'll really understand.

Poor little TEX, he was in so much pain. The decision to have him put to sleep is heart breaking, but the right decision! Alright...enough tears! We love and miss you TEX!

On a happy note: Don't forget to check out the Mother's Day pictures in the post below this one.