Goodbye Lucky, I'll love you forever Options

[Steve]

I have just been through the most emotionally draining experience of my ife. My beautiful cross collie Lucky was put to sleep on Friday. She was my constant companion for 15 years since we got her from the rescue home when she was 8 weeks old. I will forever treasure the memories of the many happy years we spent together.

She was always beautiful and sleek with a gleaming black coat but unfortuantely time was taking its toll. She had arthritis and was becoming more and more feeble. Sometimes she could not stand up and I to lift her to her feet. I have been agonising for the last 4 months about when or whether I could pluck up the courage to say goodbye. I always knew that I would have trouble letting go and the fact that she didn't really have a serious medical problem but was simply fading away made it an impossible task to decide when the moment was right. I always just wanted to give her more time but the quality of that time was diminishing fast

I finally plucked up the courage 10 days ago and made the appointment at the vet for the following week so that I had one final week to say my goodbyes. I wanted to take her out for lots of walks but whenever I took her outside the house she just wanted to go back inside and go back to sleep so I respected her wishes and ended up just giving her lots of her favourite food. The only way I could get through the week was by simply trying to blank it out completelyand try to pretend it wasn't happening. The week whizzed past until on Friday I took her out for her final walk and while we were out in the woods we met a young family who were making a big fuss of her and saying how lovely and sweet she was. She happily stood there as they all stroked and fussed over her. They were asking me all about her and I could barely speak as I was fighting back the tears knowing that she looked so lovely and happy and yet only a few short hours of her precious life remained.

The short walk to the vets was the longest walk of my life and I thought my heart was going to break as I held her in my arms as she drew her final breath.

I am now going through an unbearable mix of emotions - grief, sadness, guilt, anger, loss. I feel horrendously empty inside and I feel guilty, guilty that maybe I let her go too soon and also guilty that maybe I left it too late and should have let her go sooner. But the worst feeling of all is that I feel relief that the decision has been made and the agony of indecision has come to an end. How can I feel relieved that I will never again look into those beautiful brown eyes or hear the tinkling of her name tag on her collar as she ambles through the woods at my side? She has been a huge part of my life and her presence has brought me such joy, happiness and unconditional love for so long and I cannot believe that I feel a sense of relief. That just fuels my guilt and makes me angry with myself.

Lucky, I know that you will forgive me if I let you down at the end. Whether I waited too long or didn't wait long enough I honestly don't know but I hope you understand that I was only trying to do what I thought was best for you.

I will love you forever - you will alway be in my thoughts.

God Bless

[SJ J & S]

Hi Steve how are you doing?
I went round a friends house and their dog is deteriorating like Jude, however this dog has no fur and I can now see what others saw when looking at Jude I think shes got a ways to go but it hurts so to see this once full of life dog who jumped all over me whenever I visited be all skin and bone, Jude I'm sure was the same but the fur hid so much of it.
Guilt is a complex emotion, sometimes we feel guilty with no reason to, something we said or did, and the other person probably didn’t even notice but we chew it over and over in our brain.
If you had listened to the people with the clear objective view you would have acted months earlier, my friends and family gave up trying to advise me because it was going to be my decision and mine alone, nobody had the right to tell me it was time, they simply didn’t love her enough to give up their whole life for her and as I was the decision was mine.
When she had her stroke the vet wanted to keep her in to observe her overnight as the signs can be the same for an ear infection or a brain tumour. No way, she came home with me, if these were her last hours then she was not spending them in a cage at the vet.
I've said on here before and I stand by what I said if I could take the pain away from her I would have and in the end I guess that’s exactly what I did as she is no longer in pain but I am and that’s fine by me.
And to be honest if you hadn’t helped her up it would have been painful for her to do it alone, and in the end Jude would sometimes give a little whimper when we helped her as her ribs and belly must have been so bruised.
Wish I could take your pain as well but in time this will make us better and more compassionate people who show their families and loved ones how much they love them while they still can, that’s at least one thing that’s come out of all this.
And don’t think of the any time you may have taken from her (easy to say as I had the same thoughts) but the extra time you gave her by helping her as much as you did.
I could give you 100 other thoughts to torture yourself with as I'm sure you could me but in the end what it comes down to is at the time we knew we were right, (or at least some unfathomable force did), so therefore it must have been.

Love Sue