Thanks Julie.  I'm so looking forward to getting her.  We've decided to the stay overnight beforehand so we can pick her up early and get home as soon as possible seeing as we're 4.5 hours away from the breeder.  It's going to be strange having such a young pup in the winter (got Kintra in August) - going outside for toileting in the middle of the night will be much less pleasant at this time of year, but i actually dont really care, i just cant wait

I hadnt planned on adding any more to this post but after another gsp fanatic kindly enquiring after Kintra and wanting to know if her illness was something all gsp fanatics should be aware of, i thought i should let you all know of my final update with the vet at the vet school.

They found that she had a metastatic sarcoma inside her chest attached to the left cranioventral lung lobe.  This had spread to her liver and her lung causing liver failure and respiratory problems.  It is a rare cancer but when seen it is usually in dogs over 7 years old, extremely rare in young dogs - the reason why the vet had spoken to oncologists and cancer specialists. 

It's not breed specific, no known environmental cause.  In the vet's words, Kintra was "extremely unlucky" in that it was a proliferation of bad cells.  Had it been diagnosed earlier, the outcome would still ultimately have been euthanasia.

Just wanted to clarify this in case there are any other paranoid doggy mummies and daddies out there. 

Just now catching this thread.... love and hugs to you.

Thanks.  It has definately helped because it was all such a shock with her being so young and appearing to be healthy and lively.  We have her ashes at home now too so as strange as it sounds, that has helped us enormously by enabling us to accept that she's actually gone and that we'll never see her again - well, not for a long time.  That was the difficult part because we werent there when she was put to sleep and we didnt get to see her for the last 3 days of her life - really difficult to accept because she had never been apart from us til then.  We cant go back and change that now.

But we're getting on with life now and getting ready to bring Keely home on Saturday.