A Little Bit About Santino

On Thursday, September 4th, I brought my bestest buddy Santino to the hospital for surgery.

About 6 weeks earlier, my wife came home from work one night and mentioned that Santino seemed a little down because he didn’t greet her at the door by almost knocking her over, as he would normally do. We kept an eye on him for a few days and he definitely was lethargic. His eyes started to get crusty as well. Whenever we tried to help wipe his eyes with a tissue or something, he would shy away, which was also very odd for him to do. We brought him to the vet, and after running a bunch of tests including blood, eyes, and an X-ray, and they couldn’t find anything wrong. They ruled out many things, including Valley Fever, an illness common for dogs in the Phoenix area.



We then took Santino for a CT scan. They weren’t able to locate anything in his face that would impact his eyes, and everything else seemed normal except that they found a small mass in his chest which they could not identify. They didn’t know if it was a malignant tumor or just a harmless lump. They stuck a big needle into his chest for a cytology test of the mass, and it seemed likely it was cancer. However, it was puzzling because it indicated it was a sarcoma, which I was told was a much rarer form of cancer, unusual for dogs, and that it could have been a false positive. The best thing to do would be to do a biopsy.

Through all that, Santino remained mostly himself, just a little more lethargic. The day we took him home from those tests, he had a bandage on his shaved leg and he was limping badly for 2 days due to soreness from the big needle. He fought through that limp like a champ. He never whined or complained, he just limped like it was just some new thing he needed to do.



We took him to an ophthalmologist for a comprehensive series of eye tests, and they said his eyes were absolutely perfect and could not figure out why he was “head shy” and in such discomfort in the face area, so there was probably something impacting his ocular nerves. They attributed it to the mass, and if we could remove it, it would not only rid Santino of this cancer, but would probably relieve the nerve pressure and allow is eyes to recover.

A few days later, I came home from work. He heard me, but struggled to see me from a distance of about 10 feet, and he cautiously approached until he was close enough to see me and he finally ran to me. His vision was deteriorating.

We saw an oncologist, and had our surgery consultation. They said they could operate and do a biopsy, but since they were already operating, they might as well just remove the mass entirely. It was going to be a difficult 5-6 week, very low impact recovery after the highly invasive chest surgery, but if all went well, he would be back to his old self.

A few days before the surgery, I woke up in the morning to let Santino (and our little girl, Pepper) go outside. He got up, and ran right into a wall. He was completely blind. He just stood there looking confused. But when he heard my voice, he wagged his tail and managed to follow me outside. My wife and I helped him for the next few days, training him to navigate around the house. He learned quickly, only rarely bumping into things. He was able to jump on the couch and climb up and down his little doggie steps into bed. He was adapting well to everything that was happening to him, and he never stopped being a happy little man no matter what. He was eating, drinking, and doing his thing, and would still bark at noises outside, greet us at the door, wag his tail, snuggle hard, and just be a super good boy.



Thursday, September 4th came, and I brought him to the hospital for his surgery. They gave him a check, and determined his retinas had detached, probably from a rise in blood pressure, and there was no way to reverse it. Regardless of the success of the surgery, he was going to remain blind. This was awful news, but I was encouraged by how quickly he had adapted to his blindness over the past few days. The surgeon gave us an 80% chance that he could remove the mass and Santino would have a successful recovery. It was going to be a crappy few weeks, but Santino was going to come out of all of this just as strong and happy as he ever was.

Santino always liked the vet, because he loved getting attention from people. He wasn’t scared one bit. He was inquisitive and happy and wagged his tail every time a new tech or doctor entered the room. I took some selfies of us in the waiting room right before they took him away for his prep.



Then I went to work, which was only 5 minutes from the hospital. Shortly thereafter, I got a text that he was in surgery and doing well. Then I got a call from the surgeon. He said the cancer had spread quickly and aggressively since the CT scan only a few weeks prior. It had completely wrapped around his heart and all his main blood vessels. It had invaded his little lungs, and had worked its way down his arms and had begun moving up his chest towards his neck. The surgeon told me there was no way they could remove it, and even just trying to get a small sample for a biopsy (to possibly help with treatment) was causing him to bleed badly because all the blood vessels were deeply entrenched inside the mass. The mass was growing so quickly, it was going to choke out his organs very soon, and his final days, weeks, or months would otherwise be made miserable with the difficult recovery from surgery.

I was sitting in a small conference room at work and I called my wife, she was in a meeting and didn’t answer right away. I’m grateful because there’s no way she was going to be able to help me, and it would have paralyzed her to have to contribute to the decision. So I called the surgeon back and told him to let Santino go.

After getting in touch with my wife and having one of the worst phone calls in my life, I called the hospital back and asked to see him. I raced over there, and they wheeled his little body out to me on a small cart. He was wrapped in a towel, and they had closed his chest wound with a large patch. Otherwise, he just looked like our sweet little Beano. I sat with him and held his paws and rubbed his face for half an hour, crying like an idiot. I wasn’t ready to leave him, but it was time.

3 weeks later, and neither my wife nor I are anywhere close to recovering, but we’re managing. It was just so sudden and unexpected.

I wanted to share that having my connection to Banthaskull is one of the things that has kept me sane through all of this. This community and the camaraderie, as well as the arrival of the Cantina and all the discussions and work that goes into the site has helped keep my mind off my sadness. It’s been an enormous help to have everyone reading this be a part of that, even if none of you knew any of this was happening. Except for Chris. It wasn’t too long ago that Chris and his wife went through their own grief with a similar loss, so it was a huge support to be able to share all of this in real time behind the scenes while we continued to do our thing at Banthaskull.

Santino was the happiest little dude, and nothing seemed to bother him. Not cancer, not blindness, not any fear of the unknown. He never complained about any of it. He was ready for whatever. We had first gotten Santino to be a companion for Pepper, who was 5 years older. They never really took to each other as much as we had hoped, but Santino definitely gave Pepper more youth. She’s 12 and a half-ish (at least), and acts like she did when we first got her over 11 years ago. Everybody who met Santino loved him instantly. When he was excited (like every time we came home from work), he would charge at us while smiling with this silly grin as he showed his teeth. I think he just never got the memo that he was supposed to show his teeth as a threat. Instead, he did it when he was extra super happy.

Santino was our “backup buddy." He was eventually going to help us get through the devastation of saying goodbye to Pepper. But it just didn’t work out that way. He was only 7 and a half, and was gone way too soon. He was with us for most of that time, and it was the best 7 years we could have hoped for. He was my best friend, and my wife and I will never not miss him.

We love you, Beano.

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