Police Officer Yaira, our Dutch Shepherd was such a hard worker and sweet loving dog. We had to let her go last night, the hardest night of my life. Yaira trained with Sgt. Shane Brevik from the Spirit Lake Police Department in Spirit Lake, Iowa and lived with us for only two months. She worked the streets for a month before cancer took her from us. We are so very sad she was only 14 months old, way too young to leave us so soon. She still did her job very well and made time for one drug find in her short career, and this was just days before she passed away. She was wanting to work until the end.
2 weeks prior we noticed her limping so took her in and she received antibiotics because her blood work showed an infection. A week later she started having seizures…it all went so fast. Before we knew it she was admitted to Iowa State University Vet Hospital that was 3.5 hours away. We were told she had lymphoma, rapid lymphoma. Her heart was pushed into her diaphragm, her lungs were at 25% capacity. We were told she had maybe 30 days, and not happy ones, if we got her on chemo.
We picked her up the next day and drove the long trip home, knowing the whole time that once we got there she would go to a better place. We stopped at home first and laid on the floor with her, she lay still between us.
End of Watch for her was at 20:15 on July 9, 2012. Looking back we can see her puffiness started a month ago, but no other symptoms. She worked her last shift 2 days before her diagnosis…she loved her job and her partner, handler Shane Brevik, so much. It all happened so fast, we lost a part of us last night.
She was one of the sweetest animals we ever got the chance to know…and although she was only with us for a short time, she touched so many people. Many people in our families and the community cried with us………Sgt. Shane Brevik & Kathleen Leathers
Thank you Officer Yaira for your service and our heart goes out to your partner Sgt. Shane Brevik and Kathleen on the loss of such a fine young officer. We will continue to fight in your honor and all the dogs that sadly continue to lose their battles to cancer. This fight will go on until the 1 in 3 dogs effected by cancer is none in 3.
