Hana Has Crossed the Rainbow Bridge

It's with great sadness to announce to my friends and fellow bloggers that Hana passed away in the early morning on Friday. She was 9 years old.

Hana had been having trouble breathing, among other things, late Thursday night. At the ER, they put her in an oxygen kennel. She hardly had a pulse. The xrays and ultrasound showed fluid around her heart and a large round mass embedded in a chamber in her heart. It was an aggressive form of cancer that doesn't reveal itself until it bursts and is pretty much too late.

Just prior in the day, when I had gotten home, Hana was just fine. She was excited when I entered the house and was her usual self, politely begging for food while we were eating dinner. In the late evening, her decline was sudden and unexpected, and happened in just a matter of a few hours.

We will miss our baby Hana with all our heart. She was the spark of our lives. The house is quiet without the pitter patter of her little footsteps.

So, Kathy, and everyone else, with your new eskie yarn, be sure you make a keepsake of your two. Or tuck away a ball of eskie yarn for safekeeping. Or have Casper's Mom make an doggie doll filled with your doggie's fur. Or make a paw print ornament or stepping stone with your fur baby. A week ago I started buying supplies to make stepping stones of Hana's footprints over the Thanksgiving break. But now it's too late.

Here's the very last photo I took of her



On that same night, which was 6 days before she passed, I took this video of her when the kids came by for Trick-or-Treating. This reflects her pretty accurately. She was certainly a barker, that's for sure, and that night we decided to just let her bark all she wanted.



~ Hana's Mom and Dad