WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS DOG? After much debate and web surfing, my husband, David, and I finally decided our “baby” would be a German Shepherd.  When we followed an ad in the local paper, we found ourselves amidst at least 20 puppies!  How to decide?  For once, I deferred to my husband and let him pick out our puppy.  The next thing I knew, I had a fluffy little fellow sitting on my lap.  We named him Bama’s Betsy’s Booger.  It’s a funny name but then, my husband’s a funny guy!  He was born on May 19, 2003.  We called him Booger. Booger was an energetic pup – as they all are!  I still remember the cuts from those razor sharp baby teeth.  However, Booger grew into a mature, magnificent, well-behaved dog.  We socialized him with people as well as other animals.  He was not overly aggressive and would not have hurt a soul, man or animal, yet he was protective.  I was never afraid when David was out of town because Boogs was in the house!  We nicknamed him “Perfection on Four Legs”. May 25, 2006 was a normal day.  When my husband and I started to go to bed at approximately 11:00 p.m., Booger came into our bedroom and curled up on the floor beside my husband.  This was odd.  Booger always slept in his bed in another room.  I knew at that point, and said to my husband, “He doesn’t feel good.”  No big deal, right?  Then sometime in the night around 3:00 a.m. we heard him retching or trying to retch.  We knew something was wrong but it never crossed our minds that it was something serious.  The next morning we got up at approximately 6:00 a.m. and we knew something was terribly amiss.  We called our veterinarian at home and were told to bring him in.  I hurriedly got dressed and dropped him off on my way to work. Within 30 minutes my husband called and said that Booger was going to have emergency surgery and his chances were 50/50.  Approximately 3:00 p.m. I was told that Booger came through the surgery, however, he was not out of the woods.  We needed to transport him to a 24-hour care facility where he was to be monitored around the clock for at least 2 days. My husband and I showed up at 5:00 p.m. to do this and our veterinarian told us he had just “crashed”.  This meant that his heart had stopped.  She got him back but he was critical.  She offered to ride with us to the 24-hour care facility in case his heart stopped again but we never made it that far.  After a tireless effort by our veterinarian and her assistant, Booger died in our arms at approximately 7:00 p.m., May 26, 2006, exactly one week after his 3rd birthday.  What happened?