Thanks fellas.
Here's a version of what I wrote.
When we rescued Mac back in the first week of March, we were told he was a black lab/border collie mix. Some people would ask us if he had pit/terrier in him. He may have, but he was clearly mostly black lab. The shelter we adopted him from said that their best guess was that he was 2-3 months old and while we faced typical puppy challenges, we all fell for him hard.
After about a week or two, we felt we had really lucked out because he seemed so mellow (this was our first dog). When we discovered he wasn't eating we got worried and took him to the vet. It turns out he had parvo. After a few touch and go days (about a week total) we were able to bring him home with a clean bill of health. The vet said we were fortunate to catch it when we did and she expected him to be just fine.
And fine he was. When we first brought him home, he barely tipped the scales at 20 lbs. The most recent time he was weighed he came in at 51 lbs.
He was also amazingly friendly. He may have barked at you, but it was only to get your attention so you'd come over to pet him. Sure he was active and high energy, but as long as we exercised him in some way, he was fine and would usually tucker out. Essentially this was a healthy, happy dog that had seemingly put a real health scare in his rear view mirror.
Or so we thought.
This past weekend my wife and I took a long-scheduled trip to Chicago. My kids went to my sister and brother in law's house and we boarded Mac. The vet's office also boards dogs and cats and we know some of the people who work there so we felt comfortable leaving him in their care for a couple of days. Since he had been there in March and back for well/shot visits, a lot of people knew him and he was as happy and as energetic as could be as we checked him in. We checked him in on Friday night with plans to pick him up early Sunday afternoon.
Around dinner time on Saturday, the vet called us saying that they noticed he was a bit lethargic and wasn't really eating. Given his history, she said she'd like to run some tests but didn't seem overly alarmed. We went to a play Saturday night and headed to Midway Airport for our flight back to Columbus, OH with plans to go get our kids in Columbus, go pick up Mac and go home (we live in Athens, OH).
As we sat in the gate at Midway, the vet calls us and says that we need to get to her office ASAP. She said Mac needed to get to Columbus to an emergency clinic as soon as possible (that drive is essentially the same drive on 37 between Bloomington and Indy). We frantically tried to reach friends - I even posted a plea on facebook for help - and finally a friend picked Mac up and sped up to Columbus. We were supposed to meet him in Columbus at the emergency vet clinic, but we were too late. He was gone by the time we got there.
We talked to the vet after the fact and she said that she's never seen anything like it. She didn't understand how a puppy could go from being so full of life on Friday evening to passing away roughly 36 hours later. While not 100% certain of what actually killed Mac, she and some of her colleagues she consulted with determined that either he was simply born with a weak immune system or the parvo did more damage to his immune system than they could detect. She said that on Sunday morning, he had almost no white blood cell count and his temperature was 105. Her guess is that he died of some sort of viral infection that probably would have been relatively easy for a dog with a stronger immune system to fight off.
She did reassure us that it's highly unlikely that he died from ingesting a toxin, which was mildly reassuring because we were racking our brains trying to figure out what he might've accidentally eaten or gotten into.
All in all, this week has really sucked. The kids pretty much have cried on and off since. My wife and I have too. Having him with us for just over 5 months seems so short, but it was just long enough for all of us to fall for him hard.