My first "kid"

I have already posted on Facebook, but if you missed it, our Scrubby is very sick. Scrubby's abdomen is filling with fluid. We noticed this a few weeks ago, but it rectified itself so we thought it was a fluke thing. But now it has happened again and is very large. We went to the vet today, and his stomach is filled. It appears he is in either heart or liver failure. The vet is leaning toward liver failure. We will do a heart x-ray tomorrow and drain the fluid. If the fluid comes back quickly, we will have to say good bye at some point as we can't continue to drain on an incredibly regular basis. However, there is a chance we could drain it and it takes months to come back, at which point, we could continue this for the foreseeable future. Scrubby IS beyond a dog to me. He is my first kid and saved my life during a dark year in my life. I love him more than I could ever say and our house is very sad right now. There is a chance if the fluid takes a long time to come back, we could buy him some time. He is in great spirits and very happy so we are not thinking we need to consider something immediately, but the Vet does think that he is very sick. Our sweet boy is 8 1/2 which is not a bad life for a big dog, but certainly not as long as we hoped to have him around. 

I'd love your prayers. I'm crying ... a lot. Just yesterday we decided to give him a place on one of our couches since he has recently seemed adamant about defying any blockage we put up. We now think it was because he was so uncomfortable on the floor. So rest assured everyone, he's sleeping and resting comfortably, and he is still running all over the farm with us and wagging his tail like crazy when we bring out treats.

Oh man, even writing that paragraph makes me sad.