I Can't Believe Teddy Is Gone, I feel so guilty Options

[rsmiller]

Hello. I have never posted a message here before, never even chat online. But I just feel like I need to turn wherever I can for support right now. We lost our dog, Teddy, 2 days ago, Thursday, March 24. He was a lhasa apso. We didn't think of him as a dog though, he was one of our children. I remember the day I found him. I was looking at puppies at the pet store. I wasn't intent on buying one, just thinking about it. It was more like he found me. He followed me, walking on my feet until I picked him up. It was an instant attachment, I fell in love with him right there. I just knew he was the dog for us. After I went home, I kept thinking about him. I went back the next morning and bought him. He fit into our family right away. That was 6 years ago. We have 3 girls: Erin 13, Ashley 11, and Macie 15 months. Teddy was our boy. My husband's mom comes to babysit Macie every Thursday. This past Thursday was not any different. My mother-in-law was leaving our house at about 5:30 in the evening. Teddy had developed a bad habit of running out the front door whenever someone left. I was working so hard to break that habit. When my mother-in-law went to the door to leave, I grabbed Teddy and hugged him around the neck like always. She left, he stayed in the house, I went back to the dining room where Macie was in the high chair. A few seconds later, Erin decided to go out and tell grandma good-bye one more time, Teddy followed her out. I heard him barking outside and went to call him back in. As I stepped out the front door, I saw him running along-side my mother-in-law's car. I just froze, I didn't even call him. It just happened so fast, the next thing I knew, he had run in front of the front passenger-side tire and was completely run over. I ran to him as fast as I could, but he was already gone. When I picked him up, I could still feel his heart beating, but he wasn't breathing, he wasn't responding. He was just limp, his eyes were half-open, but he just wasn't there. Within a couple of seconds his heart stopped too. I keep wondering if he knew I was there. We never got to say goodbye. I shouldn't have froze, I should have called him, he might have come back before it happened. I just keep seeing it happen over and over. To make it worse my two oldest girls also saw the whole thing. I am also feeling terrible guilt because I always spent so much of my free time with him. But since we had the baby, I gave him less attention. Babies take so much of your time, attention, and energy, and more often than I want to admit, I just didn't feel like I had any energy left for him. I still spent time with him, but not enough in my opinion and that is a mistake I am now paying for. I guess I thought that as Macie got older and more independent, I would again have more time for him and now I regret that I won't get that chance. I just hope that he didn't feel like he had been replaced. Even though I was very busy, I didn't love him any less than before. I know that it's only been 2 days, and things will slowly get better, but I just can't believe how hard it is. I cry all the time, I can't stop thinking about him, can't concentrate on simple things, I'm not sleeping much and can't eat. One minute I can be thinking "It will be o.k., we will get through this", the next minute the pain seems unbearable. My husband and two oldest aren't doing much better than I am. We have had relatives die and we haven't grieved this much for them. Macie is too young to understand what has happened, but I know that she is looking for him. They were buddies. I just hope that he is happy wherever he is, and that he knows how much he was loved, still is and always will be.