Osteosarcoma

Osteosarcoma is bone cancer. Barkly was diagnosed with this terrible disease 6o days ago. Barkly passed away Saturday morning in our arms, on his land and peacefully as he is no longer in pain.

The challenge with the big breed dogs and cancer is that you can't treat to cure this cancer. The doctors will amputate as much bone and tissue as possible, then do aggressive chemotherapy and radiation to "slow" the progress/ metastasis of the cancer cells...under this direction.. 6 to 12 months is added to the animals life.

Barkly and I decided against that additional trauma and we had a special last few weeks together waiting until he could no longer tolerate the pain (which remarkably drugs are not effective because the pain is deep inside the bone as the cancer works its way outwards) and agreed to call it a day when that moment arrived.

We have many pictures of Barkly and hope to continue MyDayWithBarkly as this is what he would have wanted.... to keep living and experiencing life and its most fascinating challenges and lessons.