Lena, one of two of our Siberian husky dogs, died August 10, 2011. She was 11.8 years old. She was fine on Sunday, her usual sassy self. She was a very vocal girl as are many husky dogs. Monday morning she had trouble getting up. Jim helped her outside and when she came in she ate most of her food and received her AM insulin injection. She was diagnosed with diabetes in January of this year and was doing well with the shots and a modified diet. The short version is that she went to the vet. and an xray showed a very enlarged spleen and blood in the abdomen. Thinking dire thoughts, you know, cancer, she had a chest xray, too, and that was clear. So we thought that since 90% of tumors in the spleen are not malignant we might have a good chance of survival. After lots of discussion the decision was made to bring her home, get her as stable as possible and have the spleen removed Wednesday. Lena had ALOT of moxie. She underwent bilateral ACL repairs at 7, maybe 8 years of age and she sailed through that with flying colors. So we really thought she could get through this surgery as long as it was just the spleen that was involved. The plan was for a thorough exploration of her organs before any removal of the spleen and that revealed that her liver had multiple nodules (malignant). Our vet. called us with that information and as per our previous discussion/decision Lena stayed asleep. We brought her home and she is buried in the Garden of Owen. We let our remaining house dogs give her a goodbye sniff and each one of them laid down in the garden and quietly watched as we buried her. Such remarkable senses of respect and honor on their part. Our great hoochie girl, Lena, is sorely missed.