Thanks for all the replies, they are so very appreciated.

I have health insurance through the state and I have been denied multiple times for disability, but the lawyer said my marital status did not have any bearing. I'm just not "sick" enough according to SSDI. I have long given up on the hope that he will be financially responsible or helpful in any way.

I was questioning if he was even in MLC, but this email seems to lean heavily towards it. I have been fighting cancer for over a year, haven't heard from him, and he's left me to fend for myself financially, but then sends me an email to say he's in the process of trying to decide if he should make the final decision to put the dog down.

Why not wait until the decision is made, instead of telling me now when I'm 1000 miles away and all I can do is feel helpless and sad. I can't see the dog, I can't participate in the decision making process. All he's done by telling me this is make me upset.

After not even getting a "How are you feeling?" for over a year while I have gone through 4 rounds of chemo, surgery, radiation and now more chemo, am I supposed to rush to comfort him while he deals with the dog, who he took 1000 miles away from me by HIS choice while I had no say in the matter.

I have a program I use for some freelance work that tells me when emails are read. I know that he never even opened the last email I sent him for 7 months. He finally read it in mid-May but never responded. (It was just a short email telling him I was thinking of him and his family on the anniversary of his father's death.) Now I see that yesterday he actually read it again. So he's definitely checking his email again, rereading my previous emails to him, and probably expected an immediate response from me because he knows how much I love my dog.

This man walked out on me 3 years ago, left me to fend for myself financially and only engaged in intermittent vague/casual banter, which changed to absolutely nothing and him changing his phone number when I got sick with cancer.

I have just reread my past few emails to him, because I know he's reread them as well. They spell everything out pretty clearly and even an MLCer can see the trajectory of all of this. Multiple times I asked him to honor the financial agreement and told him I would like to have the dog back. He never came through and now the dog is dying and I'm devastated that I have no chance of seeing him to say goodbye.