***thank You All***

To all of you who have shared your stories and your feelings here, and especially to all of you who replied to my posts (most especially that first long one when I was in so much dark anguish): thank you from the bottom of my heart. It is amazing to me that we have never met, and that you will never know how many times I read and re-read and cried over your replies and stories, and how much they soothed and calmed and comforted me, especially in that first awful two weeks.

Know that I have read almost every post in this forum in the month since I found this site, and have read many of your archived posts to understand your individual journeys and that it has been *so incredibly helpful* to me in working through my grief. I wish I had the emotional energy and intellectual eloquence to answer each and every post and offer wisdom and comfort. I answered a few representative posts where I felt I could offer some small thing. But I feel deeply and empathetically for you all, every day.

For anyone who has followed my journey, or for the newly bereaved here, I can honestly say that the initial gut-wrenching, brain-searing, almost unbearable pain and guilt has largely subsided. I didn't know if it would but it did. From that first few weeks of half-crazed grief and guilt I am now in a place where I know and believe that:

1) Shelby was very sick and if I euthanized her too early it was a mistake of days or hours, no more.
2) Her vets, like most vets, were loving competent people and would never have agreed it was time to euthanize unless they truly believed this.
3) In as much as Shelby lived a long (15+ years) time, had a happy comfortable life, and a painless end after only a few days of illness, she was much more fortunate than 99% of the living beings to ever grace this planet. And the fact that I got to be with her at the end, I realize now (even though I caused her euthanasia experience to be stressful and scary, albeit not painful I pray), is an INCREDIBLE stroke of good fortune. I was feeling so devastated for us both but now I realize we were truly some of the luckiest two beings on the planet when it came to saying goodbye.

However, having said that, for newbies and for people still struggling I want to say in case it helps at all: The Most Important Thing I learned here is that we ALL feel incredible, unbearable pain and guilt when our pets die. Pain because we loved them so much and guilt because their death, NO MATTER how it happened, did not live up to our “ideal” death. However, as I learned from reading all your stories, there is NO ideal end. None. There is only the ideal here and now, and the ideal event that we adopted a small needy puppy or kitten, and the ideal fact that we loved them and gave them a good life, the best we were able. Not The-Best-Life-Ever-Life, or The-Most-Perfect-Life-Imaginable, just as a good a life as we could provide as fallible human beings. As I was told once about mothering human children, and to which I fervently cling whenever I look at my small daughter: you don’t have to be the Perfect Parent, just good enough.

A friend of mine believes that children choose their parents and pets choose their owners. I am starting to believe this too, especially for pets. Shelby chose me, and she got me: both the worst (panic and fear and flakiness and impulsiveness) and the best (deep love and attachment and care and the ability to stumble and my way to the right solution eventually) of me. It makes perfect sense now, as we were very much alike: nervous but dependable, reserved but loving, serious yet playful. We were made for each other, and you have to take the bad with the good.

I still miss Shelby and feel a significant emptiness and a sadness, but now I am mostly just missing her instead of feeling guilty and destroyed like I was at first. I still hate those last few minutes but I accept that they were necessary. Part of me died when Shelby died but now I know that I just have to learn to live with that hole and make it part of a new me instead of hoping it will go away. I was able to accomplish this by talking and grieving with loved ones but just as importantly, through reading your stories and posting my own and reading your replies. No one but other pet owners could really understand what I felt. Not even my loving husband and mother. Somehow knowing I was not alone, not singled out for some special brand of torment, was so soothing. I cannot stress how much this forum meant to me. I am so grateful that you inspired me to tell my story of Shelby’s death honestly and thoroughly. I am glad I have those posts to remember her by and I am glad that I got it all out and was able to work through it piece by piece. Every post of yours helped me in that process.

I am currently in a point in my grieving where I need to log out for a while, and put away the dog bed, the collar, the blanket she died on, and most of the pictures, and start forging some new patterns in my life. Not to forget her but to learn to live my life without her. Then I will come back to this tokens with fond memories.

Thank you all, you loving compassionate strangers who helped me to start climbing out of a pit of despair. I need to keep climbing a little on my own now, supporting my own weight. But I will try to come back when I have enough strength and distance to lend a hand to others.

Love and peace to you all,

Susan

"Shelby’s Mom" forever….Shelby Dog, you were my first baby and the constant companion of my young adulthood. You got me through a divorce, a move across the country, a new marriage, and a new baby. I moved 5 times in our 15 years together but you were always there for me. I wish you had lived to my 40th birthday this year but maybe the universe knew I needed to start making some new patterns before then. My darling baby I was not perfect but I did the best I could do. If it wasn't good enough I hope you forgave me. I will love and remember you and treasure our times together forever, my girl. Love, Mom

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” –Winston Churchill

“Those who have courage to love, should have courage to suffer.” –Anthony Trollope

“Nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.” –W. B. Yeats

bye

Thoughts On Euthanasia And Pet Ownership

I have been thinking lately that as soon as you get a pet you should also get a booklet about euthanasia. The more I think about it, the more I am shocked to think that even though I was a very responsible pet owner and loved Shelby dearly, it really never occurred to me that I would probably have to euthanize her eventually. For some reason I thought most pets just died "naturally" (whatever that means, I can't tell you), but after reading here and other places since Shelby's death I am starting to realize that nearly all pets will have to (or should) die via euthanasia otherwise they often die in pain or long after life ceases to be worth living. But nobody ever tells you this!!! I feel like I was completely blindsided by the sudden need for euthanasia, but really I should not have been, especially as the owner of a 15+ year-old dog. You'd think the vet would have mentioned it on one of our frequent visits (where I live you have to get them shots every 6 months if you ever board in a kennel).

I am thinking that as soon as a dog reaches 8 or 9 your vet should have a talk with you about preparing for this eventual day (assuming you will have the luxury of following your plans). If I had known what the process was, or how hard it would be emotionally to make and execute the decision, or the fact that different vets do it differently, or even that it takes skill to do it right, I would have given much more thought to how I wanted to manage Shelby's euthanasia. In my ignorance, I thought it wouldn't make any difference what clinic I went to. I have been complaining to everyone who will listen about how terrible I feel for taking her to a strange uncaring vet for her death, but maybe I should really be rejoicing that the man was at least fast and competent.....it could have been a much worse nightmare than it was if he had been incompetent.

I am also kind of angry that the regular vet didn't tell me it might be a better experience for both Shelby and me if I took the time to calm down and come to her (the regular vet) instead of going somewhere close to my house. "Oh, can you get it done up there?" was all she said. Not, "Susan, I know you are panicking right now because Shelby's breathing is getting much worse, but if you can calm down and be strong just a little longer for Shelby, you can make the drive over here and we will help you through this." But I guess this is something you say to a child, not a grown woman. Oh, I know it's wrong to be angry at the vet when it is really all my responsibilty. I guess I'm still looking for someone to blame. But my ignorance about the need for, and the process of, euthanasia truly is amazing. If I thought about it at all I thought it would be a clear-cut obvious decision my husband and I would make after witnessing illness and decline over a period of months or weeks.....not by myself after a few days of fast decline.

It has been almost 2 weeks and I do feel much better going through most of my daily life, but I also have a huge dark lonely hole in my guts. It's not a sweet sadness, either, it's a vague sickish feeling of loss and despair and hopelessness. I so miss my furry soft beautiful girl, and so wish I had done better for her at the end. I am remembering every time she wanted to go for a walk and I was too tired or said I would do it tomorrow. Then one day she didn't want to walk anymore. I am remembering all the times I should have bathed her and combed her more often and then she was too sick to enjoy that last bath and then collapsed. I have been trying to remember all the good times but these happy scenes keep being interrupted with heartbreaking memories of how sadly she looked at me when I bent down to pick her up and carry her into the vet's office that last time. I remember looking over her soft head at the door jamb, trying not to bump her head as I awkwardly tried to get the door open with my hip and shoulder. Stop, stop, stop!!!

My husband said I am ruining the 14 years Shelby and I had together by throwing it away to dwell on that last bad hour. But why did the worst hour have to be the *last*?

I know you are all tired of my obsessing over this. I just wanted to vent one more time; I think it helps to write it down and launch it into cyberspace. I will try to post something happy about Shelby in the tributes forum soon. Maybe this will help.

Susan

New Guilts And Fears

Now that I am finally feeling a *little* less horrible and guilty 24/7 about losing Shelby (thanks to all your wonderful, understanding, compassionate, replies), I am developing a new kind of guilt: here I am so distraught over my Shelby’s passing, yet so many people have lost *human beings* from their lives. For example, every day at my daughter’s preschool I see a mom whose 4 year old daughter died 5 years ago. I always felt very tender and sympathetic towards her but now I want to grab her by the shoulders and ask her, “How on earth did you even survive? How do you continue to get up every day and function? How did you just not die from grief immediately”? I am frightened thinking of what that women has had to face. Judging by the profound sickening darkness I feel about losing Shelby, I am fairly certain if anything happened to my daughter I would just find the nearest bridge and immediately jump off. I find myself scared of so much now….scared that something will happen to my husband or daughter or someone else in my life…..I could barely stand to exist the first week after Shelby died that if anything happened to my child.....well, it is simply terrifying to contemplate the ensuing pain.

Does anyone else feel guilty or fearful over your extreme grief over losing “just” a pet? I hate to admit this out loud but I am suffering more now than when I lost any of my grandparents. Not that we were extremely close emotionally or geographically but they were relatives. Am I just twisted? Yet, I *know* all my feelings about Shelby are all too profound and real.

Finally, even though everyone around me was so sypathetic the first week, now I feel like they are tired of hearing about Shelby and ready for me to feel better and move on. Last week when people said, “how are you doing?” I felt free to cry “Terrible!” Now I still feel sick and lonely but I feel like I need to start saying “fine!” and listen to their stories about difficult toddlers and bad days at work and all I can think is “do you really think I can actually focus on what you're saying when all I can think about is how I dragged my beautiful trusting dog to euthanasia only a week ago? Are you heartless or just dense?” Thankfully my husband isn’t acting this way. The one and ONLY single good thing about him being gone the week Shelby passed is that now that he is home he is fully mourning her also, so I feel like I have company in my grief.

I have no idea if any of this makes sense. Any comments welcome.

Susan

I Failed Her So Badly!

I had Shelby, my gentle, beautiful, shiny, fluffy, red-brown 15-year-old
chow-lab dog, euthanized Monday, and I am consumed by grief not only from
missing someone who was physically present in my life nearly every day for
the last 14 years, but also extreme guilt and anguish over the way I ended
her life. I don't even know exactly how old she was, only that I found her
in 1990 and the vet thought she was a year old then. But until a few weeks
ago she was quite healthy and happy (except for a touch of arthritis which
responded brilliantly to a little medication), romping with us in the
backyard, and loving her walks. Plus I had a thorough physical and bloodwork
done on her last summer whose results had led me to hope she had at least a
good year or two left.

However, her decline was both sudden and exponential. I took her to the vet
only a week and a half ago! During January she had fallen several times, was
having difficulty getting around the house, and started refusing to go for
walks, all of which I had been attributing to the arthritis getting worse.
She also was not eating much---not that she had ever been a big eater---but
I thought this newly decreased appetite might be due to the new Senior chow
I had recently introduced. Then Wednesday February 2, during a warm tub bath
I was giving her to help ease the "arthritis", she was breathing very
heavily, looked weak, and when she went in the backyard afterward to roll in
the grass she fell awkwardly, looked surprised, and did not get up. I helped
her to her feet and called the vet.

By that Saturday February 5, after xrays, ultrasounds, bloodwork, and a
consult with a specialist, I knew:
1.. She had a large mass in her chest near her heart.
2.. Fluid was filling up in the space around her lungs, making it
increasingly difficult to breathe. I had it tapped on Wednesday and it was
clear. Her breathing eased somewhat for a day or so. I had it tapped again
on Saturday and the volume had doubled and had become bloody and clotted.
Her breathing eased for about half a day then became labored again.
3.. Shelby was down to 41.4 lbs after weighing 48/49 her entire adult
life.

She started having increased difficulty breathing. I tempted her with
chicken and steak but by Sunday she couldn't eat at all (although she
hobbled over to look at the treats several times). Sunday and Monday morning
I tried to feed her by hand and the food just dropped out of her mouth. It
also became increasingly difficult for Shelby to get around. Sunday night
and Monday morning it seemed her only goal was to find a comfortable
position to focus her energy on breathing in short, labored, fast breaths.
(At one point I counted and got 70 respirations per minute.) She wanted to
be outside all the time, even at night, even in the rain. The last 2 nights
I got up every couple hours to check on her, afraid she would need help and
I wouldn't hear her.

Then, 8:30 am Monday the specialist called to say the final lab results were
back and the mass in her chest was definitely carcinoma. Operating was not
an option (not that I would have put her through that at age 15). I asked
what would happen now and was told you can either keep draining the fluid,
or she will die from lack of oxygen, or you need to think abut euthanizing.
That was it. I couldn't see subjecting her to more drainings, and I would
have killed her myself before I let her slowly suffocate. Given how quickly
she had deteriorated I felt like I needed to euthanize and I needed to do it
quickly. I tried to contact called the regular vet several times to get her
opinion and was told she would call when her appointments were done.

And, of course, to top all this off, my husband is out of the country this
week on a critical business trip.

My daughter and I spent the morning with Shelby. I tried to love her enough
for an eternity. Of course I failed. I dropped off my daughter at preschool
at 1 on Monday and arranged for a friend to pick her up and keep her after
school. I came home and sat on the cool grass in our sunny breezy backyard
with Shelby. I talked to her and hugged her and petted her and looked in her
eyes and watched her and sobbed, desperately trying to figure out what to
do. She was just standing there, focussed on breathing, her tongue hanging
out just a little and her eyes sunken and empty. "Is this it?" I asked her,
"is this it, baby? Are we done now? What do you want me to do? Please tell
me what to do!" No answer except the quick shallow raspy breathing and the
bony body and the sunken empty eyes. I called her regular vet's office (who
is 20 miles away in a town I used to live in) and demanded to talk to her
doctor now. When she came to the phone I told her I thought it was time but
I needed to feel I was making the right choice. The vet said she hadn't seen
the specialist's reports yet but that, based on what I was saying, she
thought that although *maybe* we could give her little more time with more
drainage, we had to ask ourselves if it was likely to be the kind of time
worth having, and given how quickly the fluid had refilled 2 times, it was
probably time for me to find us both some peace. That was it. I had my
answer.

So, did I then put my beloved gentle beautiful longtime companion in the car
and drive her 45 minutes to her kind vet of 10 years and quietly end her
life gently and lovingly by a compassionate woman who knew her? No. I did
not.

In a frenzied, hysterical, even somewhat *cold-hearted* panic I had her put
down that very hour, nay, half-hour, in a clinic 2 minutes away where they
didn't know us and where we were treated competently but quickly and
clinically. And I *swear* she knew what I was up to: twice I went to pick
her up to carry her to the car and she tottered a few steps to elude my
grasp. I thought, "well if you have the energy to walk you can walk," so I
leashed her and walked her slowly through the house and out to the sidewalk,
where she managed a few steps down the sidewalk like we were going for our
first walk in 2 weeks. This nearly killed me inside but didn't stop me from
picking her up and putting her in the car. Drove to a nearby clinic (which I
had found in the phone book, chosen because the ad was full of new-age crap
about the life spirit that binds people and animals and a lot of yammering
about how compassionate they were and how they were so into animal rights.
Also the receptionist sounded compassionate on the phone and said they were
a walk-in clinic. But when we got there they treated me like I was some
creep just there to get rid of an inconvenient old dog.)

I did have a few minutes of hugging and stroking and talking to her on the
table in the exam room but even this was punctuated by paperwork and a
credit card transaction. (When I saw that reciept in my purse a few days
later I almost threw up.) Again I tried to love her and stroke her enough to
make it all OK. Although weak and exhausted, when the vet and the technician
came in and got to work shaving her leg she got agitated. She had to be
restrained by a technician on the table (why did I let them put her on a
table?!? she hated exam tables!! I wished I had held her body in my arms!)
while the vet found the vein. I thought they would sedate her first so I
could have a final peaceful moment with her but no, they pumped all the
drugs into her right away and she went from being agitated to being dead
immediately, while I was holding and stroking her face and head and looking
at her eyes and telling her everything was going to be OK. The vet said that
when he looked at [something....I don't remember what] he could see she was
already dying. This, and the fact that I was with her, touching her, in the
end are the *only* things keeping me from complete despair, but I was
sobbing and shaking like a maniac the whole time and I hate myself for
making this her last vision on earth.

But mostly I hate and am tormented by the fact that I made a trip to a
strange vet her last experience. This is KILLING me. Why did I do it this
way? She could have made a 20-mile drive to the regular vet. But no, I was
on a MISSION to get it DONE. I was woman possessed: Honestly, I just wanted
her dead and buried NOW. I had this idea that I had to get her home and
buried before my preschooler saw the body or saw me digging a grave. Later I
realized my preschooler probably wouldn't have even noticed either one for
days. But at the time I felt trapped between my dog and my child and my own
hysteria. I felt I had run out of time.

Did I think she would be too uncomfortable, or expire, in the car on the
freeway for 45 minutes? That's not worse than being uncomfortable in a
strange vet's office. Did I think it was too much for me to stand driving
her 45 mintues to her death and the 45 minutes home with her body? I could
have found someone to drive with me. I never even tried. Did I think I
needed to do this alone, just her and me (and strangers)? I don't know.

Anyway, after trying twice to talk me into cremation, the technician helped
me carry her body to the trunk. He asked me several times if I was going to
be OK driving home.

I brought Shelby home by 2:30 pm and dug a 4-foot-deep hole alone with a
lunatic's strength. I had her buried by 8:30 that night.

So now I'm nearly incapacitated by grief at missing her but even more, by
the sickening unbearable anguish of thinking that I ended our long loving
relationship hastily and badly. Then sometimes I wonder if she was really
even that sick at all? Or even completely dead when I buried her? I am
making myself crazy. I spoke with the vet and the specialist afterwards to
get reassurance that I did the right thing, but I still have to look at my
notes from the vet's calls and force myself to visualize her bony body
straining for breath to keep from going crazy thinking I killed my dog for
no reason.

Everyone says "you did the right thing" but, honestly, what else
are they going to say now with her dead and buried? Not only am I missing my
gentle beautiful loving girl who has been with me more than anyone in my
life for the last 14 years, but I don't think I will ever forgive myself or
stop feeling horrified by the way I ended her. I feel sick, I can't sleep, I
can't eat, I can't stop crying hysterically. How can you love someone so
much and fail them so badly?

If anyone can inject any sense into this insane rant, I would be so grateful. Or tell me I just screwed up....maybe it will help me start coming to terms with that.

Sincerely,

Susan