Melvin has allergies.  Plain and pretty simple.  He takes the perfect balance of medication to help with the allergies.  Expensive but worth it.  These medications are a life-long endeavor.  Some of them are newer to the market than others and  the decision ultimately arose whether to provide him an itch free life now, not knowing all the long-term effects, or to allow the itching to an extent and play it safer.  Having lived with Melvin during the horrible, itchy, bloody days, I know in my heart that the decision is for him to be as itch-free as possible in the here and now.  No one knows what will come. The goal is to focus on quality of life, not quantity of days.

One unfortunate side effect of those medications is that my boy has bouts of nausea.  When a dog is nauseous he smacks his lips together.  Over and over and over. Like a metronome.  You think there will be a break when they sleep, but there isn’t.  The lip smacking is continuous.  Yes, it’s a little like nails on blackboard but as annoying as it can get, it will never be worse than what they are feeling. 

I hope and pray that I always do right by him.  Decisions about his care are not always easy and many of them haunt me, but I stand firm in the conviction that every decision I make is backed by unconditional love. It’s pretty simple, I want him to know as much joy as possible.  I am fairly certain he has no recollection of life before me and his current exuberance level suggests that joy is winning. Check, check.