Apollo's Story - 6/24/2002 to 5/29/2005

[rygolf25]

I read somewhere that to help with the grieving process of a loss of a pet, writing their life story will help you remember all of the good times and deal with things in perspective. With that, I sat down and typed out Apollo's life and what a good life he had, even though it was way too short. We love you Apollo.

For the Love of a Boxer

This is the story of our first adopted family member, our boxer Apollo. He has been one of the best companions that anyone could have and this is written in celebration of his life. He was truly a fighter in every sense of the word and can teach us all about courage and the capabilities to keep a good attitude even in the worst situations. Let me also say that he was truly a dream come true for me. I’ve wanted a boxer for as long as I can remember and he was the best representative that the breed could ever have. My wife and I will never adopt another breed of dog due to Apollo and the affect he had on our lives and our hearts.

He was the smallest of the litter and after seeing his picture, we knew that he was going to be our first dog. We had been corresponding with the breeder by email and wanted a picture of him to see what he looked like. He had a huge head and gigantic paws which made him look just so cute that he was irresistible. If a picture is worth 1000 words, then this picture of him used every one of them to describe his personality. After setting up a time that we could meet him, we headed out on the 2 ½ hour drive, not knowing if we would own a dog by the end of the day.

We arrived at his home around 2:00 in the afternoon and were greeted by a 90 pound boxer named Zeus that almost knocked me over when he bumped into me. Zeus was the father of the litter. With that being said, we started to have some second thoughts if we wanted a dog this big. Nevertheless, we wanted to meet him and make up our minds after that. As we walked into the backyard, we knew immediately which puppy was our little boy. He was excited to see us and was, unfortunately, getting ran over by his kennelmates. They all seemed like they were showing off to get adopted by us. However, we weren’t impressed. We wanted to meet our little guy and to see if he was like we imagined by his picture. It took no time at all to realize he was that and more. He had all of the personality that we had imagined. One word came to my mind regarding him, loveable. Immediately, we signed the papers and wrote the breeder the check. We were now the proud owners of a new baby boy.

The ride home was definitely interesting. After reviewing the paperwork, we found out that our new little boy shared a birthday with his adopted father (me). If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is. We tried to put him in the kennel for the ride but he wasn’t having it. The little guy wanted to be held. Luckily, he weighed in at a whopping 12 pounds so holding him was not a problem. After a discussion most of the ride home, we decided on the name Apollo after the character in the Rocky movies. It seemed to fit as he had all of the personality of the character that Carl Weathers so played so well. He fell asleep immediately and was knocked out for hours. However, in the middle of the night, woke up crying. Little did we know, our new little boy wasn’t as healthy as he looked.

He spent the rest of the night crying and vomiting. I was extremely worried as this was our first dog and I didn’t know what was wrong. That morning, I took Apollo into the vet to find out what was wrong and to do a “well puppy” exam. After doing some tests, they informed me that he had roundworms and a minor case of dendritic mange. The vet gave us the medication and special food to get rid of the problems and we took Apollo home. I contacted the breeder immediately to find out what if she knew about these problems. She claimed they did not know anything about them and none of the other dogs had any problems. I think it was mainly a case of someone raising animals who didn’t have the proper knowledge or skill to do so. After a week, Apollo was as good as new and the worms were gone. The mange issue took a little longer to clear up but after using some special shampoo for a little while, he finally was healed.. He was truly a joy to have around the house and was just fun to be around. He was so energetic and just enjoyed life.

It didn’t take long and our lives revolved around our new son. He had us wrapped around his little finger and was even sleeping in our bed within a couple of weeks. Our family was “whipped” right away also. Who could resist a little 12 pound boxer puppy that’s paws were bigger than the rest of his body? He was the cutest little guy and just loved to be loved. The first time we took him up to see my parents and their golden retriever “Mac”, they weren’t sure what to think of each other. This little boxer and this big golden retriever. Mac had hip dysplasia and was having more and more trouble getting around which also didn’t help their situation. Apollo was so energetic that he just wanted to play with Mac. Mac was interested in playing also but you could just tell that his body would not let him. It was very sad to see. Not long after that, my parents had to make the difficult decision to put Mac to sleep. He was a great dog and at only 8 years old, it was well before his time.

Apollo was growing like a weed and taking everything in stride. The treatments that he had to undergo at the vets, a house without a backyard that was attached so he could only go out on our schedule, etc. What a wonderful dog. The decision finally came to purchase our own home with a nice big backyard for him to play in. He loved it. With the doggie door that I installed, he could come in and out as he liked. It was his domain and he was the king. There is nothing more impressive than to see a beautiful boxer sitting on point like a statue and watching over his yard.

The time had come to find Apollo a little sister. We hade done some searching on the internet and decided rather than going through another breeder, we would rescue a boxer from Midwest Boxer Rescues. Jamie got on their website and when she saw the picture of little “Cami”, she wanted her immediately. Cami is definitely a one of a kind dog. She has a lot of attitude but is still fairly timid. The best way I can describe her is she has an attitude at a distance. She fell in love with Apollo immediately but it took him a little longer to get used to this little annoying girl. Within a few days, they were playing and interacting like they had always been together. It was nice to see them both so happy and having such a good time with each other. Unfortunately, the downside of getting a 2nd dog is that mom and dad are somewhat taken out of the picture because I assume “we aren’t as fun to play with”. The important thing is that the dogs are happy.

Things went great for about 4 or 5 months until one day when Apollo started having some breathing issues. We were watching a movie and relaxing one Monday night and he began panting and wheezing quite hard. We didn’t know what was going on so we rushed him in to see our vet to find out what was going on. Initially, the vet thought it might be due to an allergic reaction or he ate a plant in the backyard and he ingested some poison. After further tests, she found out that his heart was beating at approximately 240 beats per minute. The normal dog’s heart rate is 80 beats per minute. She advised us to take him to Kansas State University immediately and gave him some medicine to temporarily slow down his heart rate. First thing in the morning, we set up an appointment at KState and drove down there mid-morning not knowing what to expect.

When we arrived at Kansas State, we met the two doctors we would be working with on Apollo, Dr. Bulmer and Dr. Heaney. They are the two canine cardiologists at KState and we were very impressed right from the start. They ran multiple tests on him and came back with a diagnosis: Dilated Cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart and an Arrythmia. We weren’t sure what that meant but they wanted to keep him down there to run further test and monitor him. With his heart at that rate, he could have gone into heart failure at any second. We headed back to Lincoln without our son. When we got home, we were all very sad. Most of all Cami, her big brother wasn’t there. I missed him so much that I headed down two days later to spend the night and hang out with him. Since he was being monitored, Dr. Bulmer and Dr. Heaney let Apollo stay at the hotel with me that night. It was one of the longest nights I had ever had up to that point because I constantly kept an eye on him and making sure he was breathing. The next morning, I took him back to KState and they readmitted him into intensive care. I headed back to Lincoln again, without my little boy. When we made our daily phone call on Friday to KState, we asked if we could come down to get him. They let us come down but were very short on the phone. When we did get down there, we realized why, it was bad news. The medications and treatments that they ran on Apollo weren’t helping him. If his heart stayed at that rate for much longer, he would surely pass away.

We were heart broken. They gave us two options. Continue with the drug therapy and take a chance that it may work but the longer it took, the more damage it would do and the better the chance that Apollo wouldn’t make it. OR to do a defibilation and shock his heart back into a normal (or more normal) rhythm. They informed us that this option would give him a 50/50% of survival immediately. Both were going to be expensive but we made the decision that we would save our little man at any cost to us. After discussing it for a few minutes, we decided that the defibrillation was the way to go. Both doctors secured our decision by saying it was their opinion that was the best option also. It took them about 45 minutes to set up which we spent with Apollo loving and petting him knowing that we may never see him again. It was extremely difficult. They took him back and told us we should know more in about an hour. 20 minutes later, both doctors came out to see us in the waiting room. We expected the worse as 20 minutes is a lot less than the hour they thought it might take. Fortunately for us, it was the best news we had received in quite some time. His heart rate had dropped from 240 bpm down to about 120 bpm which is just above the normal range for a dog’s heart rate. With drug treatment, they gave us an estimate for Apollo’s life expectancy at 6 months. This was mid-April of 2004. We took Apollo home and started his regiment of drugs (5 different drugs throughout the day) and kept a close eye on him. Surprisingly enough, he was back to his old self!!!

Looking at Apollo in the following months, it’s hard to believe how close to death he honestly was. He was now healthy (relative term) and was living a great life once again! He and Cami were now attached at the hip, closer than ever, and just enjoying life. During all of this, my parents had gotten two more golden retrievers, Sadie and Sampson. They are both great dogs and our dogs loved to go play with them. Holidays were always fun as we would have four dogs running around the house not including the many family members! We continued going to Kansas State every few months for checkups but Apollo always breezed through them and maintained his stable condition. In February of 2005, we had a little girl, Lauren, who was three months premature. She was to spend almost three months in the hospital which meant less time with the dogs. Unfortunately, mom and dad spent so much time at the hospital that we didn’t pay as much attention to the dogs as we could. The good news was they had each other and that was more than enough for them. We spent the time at home with them and trying to spoil them as much as we could. In March of 2005, “grandpa” and I took Apollo down to Kansas State for another checkup. He, again, did well and they informed us just to keep up on his meds as usual and to see them in 6 months. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the case.

He would be fine for another two months or so but early to mid May he would start to breathe pretty heavily. We thought we would take him in to make sure nothing was wrong. They did a chest x-ray and found that his chest had filled with fluid. He was only using about 25% of his lung capacity to breathe which explains the difficulty breathing. His vet in Lincoln, Dr. Terhune, recommended we do a “chest tap” to drain the fluid and then increase the diuretic that he is on to keep the fluid off of his heart and lungs. We did and he seemed better but still not back to his old self. We knew that we were getting closer to losing him. He had already been with us over a year which was well beyond everyone’s expectations. We tried to increase his diuretic again and added yet another drug. The problem we were running into now was his lack of appetite. He was not eating (much of anything including people food) and was losing massive amounts of muscle. He was starting to look very skinny and was still experiencing periods of heavy breathing. The vet informed us that when the fluid builds up inside his chest like that it is the same as us drowning. We couldn’t allow that. We tinkered with his drugs for another week or so but over Memorial Weekend, things came to a head.

We were downstairs watching a movie and Apollo just sat and panted. He finally came over to me and put his head on my knee and just stared into my eyes. I knew what he wanted. He started to suffer and wanted to be let go. I couldn’t convince myself that any of us wanted that so I took him for a walk to see how he reacted. He didn’t make it three driveways up the street before he started choking and coughing. At that point, I knew what we needed to do and the longer we waited, the more he was going to suffer. We walked back home and I told Jamie that it was time. She agreed. This was one of the most difficult decisions that I’ve ever made and luckily Jamie and I agreed on it. We packed up our daughter Lauren, Cami and Apollo and headed off to the emergency vet clinic in Lincoln to do something we knew would come but never wanted to do…


Sunday, May 29th at approximately 7:00 pm we chose to put Apollo to sleep and have him sent to the Rainbow Bridge. They say the Rainbow Bridge is a place where animals who have passed away go to play and frolic until their human companions pass away to join them. At that point, they cross over the Rainbow Bridge together to enter heaven. I always read the stories about the bridge but never put much thought to it since we never had to deal with it. Until now. Now that we are a few days after sending Apollo to the bridge, I find great comfort in the fact that Apollo is having fun with other dogs and is healthy once again. There are no more breathing problems nor does he ever feel weak due to heart problems. There is no doubt in my mind that he is a popular dog due to his great personality and disposition. One day we will see him again and until then, he will always be in our hearts. We will never forget you and when that time does come, we will walk across the bridge with you into heaven.

We love you Apollo and please know that mommy and daddy did everything in our power to make your life as enjoyable as possible. We miss you more than you can imagine and the house is not the same without you around. Cami misses you immensely and in case you didn’t know it, she idolized you. You were her everything and she loved you so much. She is lost without you. I know that when the time comes for her to go to the bridge, you will find her and keep watch over her until mommy and daddy come to join you in many years. Until then, breathe and run free. Know that even though we will have other boxers in our lives, that none will replace you. They will be your brothers and sisters and we will love them just as we love you. You were the first and no matter what, our favorite. That is tough to say but I can’t imagine ever loving any other dog as much as I love you. You and I have a connection from our birthday to how we feel about little “yippee” dogs. You are my one and only little man and please never forget that. I will wait with anticipation for the day that you and I get to cross over to the bridge, together. I LOVE YOU.

Daddy

[K8IE]

Thank you so much for sharing your story and memories of your sweet Apollo. What a wonderful way to pay tribute to him and honor his memory and his life. The way you described him and your love for him made me cry. I am so sorry that you have had to go through the stress and heartbreak of having to say goodbye to him when he was so young, but Apollo knows how much you love him and how hard you tried to save him. You gave him a great life while he was here and I hope that will bring you comfort on the days you miss him the most.

[Jan]

I'm sorry to hear about Apollo. It is so hard to let them go, but it is sometimes the best thing that we can do for our babies.

Thanks for sharing your story!

Godspeed Apollo!

[1FlashyFan]

Your tribute to Apollo was is so beautiful. My thoughts and prayers are with your family during this difficult time. Godspeed sweet Apollo. Run free at the bridge.

[frimozo]

Your story touched my heart more than words can say. That was a beautiful tribute to your baby boy.

Godspeed sweet boy Apollo.

[douma]

I'm so sorry for your loss of Apollo

[crowpete]

O-My that was a wonderful tribute to Apollo. I have many tears right now and I hope no one here at work can see me right now. Many boxer hugs and kisses from Darby.

Godspeed Apollo
_____________
Misty mommy of
Darby female brindle
Moosie male cat
Tanner female cat

[Independence]

Typing thru my tears, my heart goes out for you. Apollo has many friends that have greeted him at the bridge. You made one of the hardest decisions to make when it comes to our babies. Be in peace knowing you did what was best for your boy. I'll keep you and your family in my prayers.

[Kosmo's Mom]

What a magnificent tribute to Apollo.
He sounds like a very special dog.
My heart goes out to you & your family. Godspeed Apollo.

[Taren]

O gosh that was wonderful. i cant imagine going through the pain you, your wife and cami are going through . yes he is waiting for all three of you. he knows that you did everything in your power to save him and make the best of his life. your family and you are in my prayers.