My mother's dog died some time back, of cancer. He was still young, and life took him from her. She was super depressed about it, so I suggested she get a new one. So she did. She adopted Brownie. He was three years old, and seemingly perfect health until he began walking funny. The vet's did a scan, and he had a ruptured disk. She tried to treat it with medicine, but it became apparent that he wasn't doing any better. So she went with surgery. However, they did an MRI on the dog and found that he was too far gone to even perform. So she had him put down, instead of suffer anymore. However, the MRI was very expensive, and she can't afford it.