Sweet Kodi

I took Kodi to the vet yesterday for a check up. I found another large lump under his front right leg, close to where we did the surgery to remove the cancer while we were in Corpus. The vet looked at it, felt around and said "I think it is best to just leave it alone". After giving Kodi a full exam, and Kodi groaning and moaning a lot when he touched his hips, joints, or legs. He said really that Kodi's pain was getting quite bad. He said that in his opinion we need to just keep him as pain free until we felt that his quality of life was bad enough to put him down. This was a hard thing to hear! Kodi had lost 8.9 pounds and the vet said that that weight loss probably added another 3-4 months to his life. So that is good and we will just continue to try to move more down that path. Kodi will be 11 in August. The vet said that he has never seen a chocolate lab live longer than 13 years and that with Kodi's size 11 would be amazing. He did say though that with the exception of the most likely cancer and the hip and joint arthritis that Kodi was in great condition. He said that he had never seen a dog with such a nice coat, teeth, and gums at this age. :) We are considering the idea of getting a pup right away. It would be hard, and I am not sure I really want to, but it was suggested by the vet that it might give Kodi a bit more life for little while and that he could help the pup figure out how to live in our home. So we are thinking a bit about that. We will see. We now have Kodi on three different pain meds twice daily. We are going to continue that until he gets too sedated or it is obvious that it is not working. :( The vet said that at most Kodi has another year, we would be blessed with any of that time. He is the best dog ever! We love him!