Our sweet Lucy passed away last week unexpectedly.  Poor girl.  We had noticed a bump on her head a few weeks ago, and took her to the vet to investigate.  They did a little biopsy there but couldn't figure anything out from that, so wanted to do a punch biopsy so they could get a cross-section of the spot.  They wanted to do it quickly so we scheduled it for last Wednesday when it just so happened that Chris was out of town.  Everything went fine - it was a minor surgery, nothing major, and I picked her up a few hours later.  She had puked a little after the surgery and they gave her some Prevacid to help.  Well, it didn't.  She kept puking, basically lost all bodily functions and passed away less than 2 hours later.  I was there for the end and it wasn't pretty.  I am so thankful to my brother and sister in law who were there to help with all the messy details.  It was so awful and I'm just glad she didn't have to go through weeks of pain and suffering.  The results of the biopsy didn't tell us much, but the vet thinks she probably had something going on in her brain, cancerous tumor or the like, and we basically sped up the end by checking out the bump.  I never even thought that could be a possibility and only thought I would feel guilty if we didn't investigate, not the other way around.
Sweet Lucy was around 11 years old and was such a changed dog from when we first got her.  She didn't even want us to touch or pet her at first and we really had to gain her trust.  I remember taking her for a walk the first time and she was scared of every noise and moving object.  She had her tail tucked between her legs for probably the first 3 months we had her.  I am happy we helped her be as happy as she could be.  She loved her morning walks with Chris and her evening bone after dinner.  She got up enough courage at the lake to explore the yard by herself and even occasionally swim.  She would even try to play with us sometimes, which was so cute and sweet because she didn't really know how to play like dogs do.  We will miss you sweet Lulu.  I hope you and Sasha bear are playing around in doggie heaven together - I think you will be good friends.