Summer's death was COMPLETELY unexpected and I think that is making this so much harder. In our eyes she was perfectly fine! She was just getting older and slowing down some. She still had her spunk for all the things that excited her, she was eating and drinking fine, nothing out of the normal at all. I started running/jogging with her about 3 miles 3 days a week for the last few months as much as I could, but now that the my daughters were in school it was great! I looked forward to these days to just spend with summer for a couple hours while they were in school! So as soon as I dropped them off I'd come home and we'd go for our walk/run. Yesterday I came home, got ready she was all excited to go, pulling the leash like normal in the beginningI was about 15 minutes into it when I noticed she was really lagging behind I almost had to pull her to keep her going, so I stopped and walked her home very slowly. I just chalked it up to her being tired or maybe her joints were starting to hurt from running so often, so she layed on my bed and I went back out for about 20 minutes to finish and when I came back I went right to her in my room and she was still panting and I looked at her gums and they were very pale and cold....I called the vet right away and brought her in....she wouldn't even get up when I grabbed her leash and I had to carry her to the car she wouldn't even walk. I knew something had to be seriously wrong for all this to happen so quick...I was so scared for her, she was panting a lot too. So they xrayed her at the vet and they saw she had a lot of fluid around her heart.I knew it wasn't good when it had to do with her heart. They didn't "fix" that kind of thing at the vet I was at so I had to go 30 minutes into the city to the vet hospital and they were afraid she wouldn't make the drive. They had to rush her in the back to give her oxygen and the dr. stuck a needle into her chest to relieve some of the pressure and drew out a lot of the fluid. She only did this to get us to make it to the vet hospital. After she had the fluid drained she looked a lot better, the fluid they said was compressing her heart. Unfortunately they said usually it's caused from a tumor. So off we went to the vet hospital with her, she looked better but still not herself, but well enough to walk into the vet hospital. They did an echocardiogram and they found that she had a hemangiosarcoma tumor on her heart that had a lot of vasculature involved. Any treatment would be invasive and it would probably only give her 5 more months and that kind of surgery wasn't even done that often and apparently her tumor was larger than they normally see. So her prognosis was really poor. At that time she was doing better the pressure was relieved and we decided just to take her home and spend time with her. They would give us medicine to help prevent more bleeding around the heart. I was checking out and waiting for her and the dr. came out urgentlyand said that she was going downhill again that the fluid was building up around her heart. They could do the needle again and relieve the fluid but it was filling up a lot faster than they expected and she looked worse than the first time it happened. So we had to make the heart wrenching decision to let her go. My husband and I went in to be with her and she lifted her head for us and then relaxed. I didn't want her to be in any pain. She went to sleep peacefully. They brought her to a private room for us so we could spend some time with her, especially since everything happened so quickly. I hugged her so tight I didn't want to let go, How was I going to walk out of there without my baby???? How was I going to tell the girls???? Adriana fed her in the morning they said they'd see them soon and now they are coming home to this...I just wasn't prepared for any of it. We woke up everything was fine....how did this happen?? I'm still in shock....I hardly slept last night. I missed her in bed with us squishing up next to our legs, I missed her coming into the girls rooms with me to tuck them in for bed, I missed feeding her her dinner, and letting her out to go to the bathroom, I missed her kisses this morning trying to get me up out of bed to feed her. Everything I did she was involved. My heart hurts soo soooo much, I know she is in a better place, but she was ripped from us too soon. I feel like a huge part of me is missing. She was a part of my life since the beginning of my marriage, she was there for me for everything, she was on every vacation with us, she was there for me through everything, When I went in the hospital to have Adriana I even had her picture there with me, b/c I missed her!I knew she wouldn't be with us forever but I thought I had at least 10 years with her. Adriana is so upset, she keeps crying and wishing summer had another birthday. She loved walking summer and summer was so good for her with walking on the leash. If you've made it this far reading I thank you so much. It helps to get it out b/c not everyone understands the love for animals that we have.