By his Hospice Care Foster Mom, Michelle Lanfear
I still remember the first time I met Apollo, in January of 2003. My fiancé Fred had
picked him up from where he was being boarded and brought him home on his lunch
break. I was coming home on my lunch break to meet Fred and Apollo. Fred ended up
having to leave before I could get home. So I walked into a room with a brand new dog in
a crate. Apollo was a little intimidating looking, and he kept making this sort of huffing
noise like he was about to bark. I fed him some treats, and let him out of his crate. I then
began to fall in love with what was one of the sweetest dogs I have ever known. Apollo
was clumsy and liked to run into us at full speed, but had one of the gentlest souls I have
known. He was always happy and just loved to be pet. He loved everyone he met - our
neighbor's children loved to come play with him and tried to convince their grandfather he
should look into adopting him. He loved to run around the yard and once we found out
what toys he liked, he loved to play fetch.
Unfortunately, Apollo had a medical condition called Ciliary Dyskinesia, which made him more prone to pneumonia. In the first 7 months we were fostering him, he was never sick. However, in July we found out he had a kidney disease. While he was not in kidney failure, he was heading that way. And there was nothing that could really be done about it. We did put him on a low protein low sodium diet to hopefully slow the process. It was at this point, Fred and I decided keep him here in hospice care. For the next couple of weeks, he w as fine. At the end of August though, he took a turn for the worse. He began not eating, then just eating a little bit, then, in the last couple days of his life, eating nothing. On September 6th, 2003, we took him back into the vet to see what was going on. Things did not look good. We made the very difficult decision to send him onto the Rainbow Bridge. He was not happy, and we felt he was bordering on starting to suffer. We never wanted him to suffer; he did not deserve to suffer.
Fred and I stayed with him, and Dr. DeSantis of Crosspointe Animal Hospital even came in
on her day off to send him on. While we were waiting for her to get there, we took him to
McDonald's and bought him some sausages. We also went to Burke Lake Park and let him
step into the lake. Because of his respiratory condition, he wasn't ever allowed near any
water like that because he might drink it and not be able to fight off the bacteria.
I am so glad that we got to know Apollo, even if it was only for eight months. I feel so lucky to have known him and will miss him more than I can say.