A Heart Divided - Need Some Help, Am I being disloyal to my Gretta girl? Options

[Gretta's Mom]

Hello Lightning Strike friends

I know the answer to my question. I just need a few words of wisdom. As you can guess, I have a new dog - a half black lab-half Newfie named Rufus. (Peggy, would you mind helping me again posting the pictures? I still don't know how. Thanks so much.) I am a solo and my best friend and soul-mate Gretta-the-Great went to the Perfect World on April 10, not so long ago. All of you helped me SOOOOOOOO much through those hellish first days and "firsts without". Automaton passed into shot-in-the-heart (which Moonbeam so kindly explained as having exchanged pieces of heart with our babies) and that passed into concrete slab on both heart and body.

Lightning Strike has helped be SO much. You can see I respond regularly and trying to help others rebounds to oneself as healing - just like loving a soul-animal rebounds a million-fold in their love for you. The tears the writing on Lightning Strike brings are good tears - they hurt but they're not toxic. Thank you for giving me this wonderful chance. Now, even though I know what I've done is right and OK, I need a few words of encouragement.

About three weeks ago, I went to see my God-given vet for a sort of "closing" conversation. He loved Gretta as much as I do and had doctored her from the starving stray she was when she was first rescued to what he once told me: that in all his years of practice he'd never seem a dog as loved as Gretta. For about a month, I wrote a daily message to Gretta - telling her how much I love her and miss her, asking her how her new life was, letting he know what I was doing, asking if she "remebered when". On my way out of the vet's office some words came out of my mouth that surprised me - he treats a lot of rescue dogs so I asked him if he came upon an old dog that nobody wanted would he tell me about it. Of course, he said he would - and then left the country for a couple of weeks.

Those words seemd to start a chain of "automaton-like" actions. I looked on the web site of the rescue agency from which Gretta had chosen me. They didn't have anybody younger than 7.5, and being fairly close to being on a fixed income and vet bills being so high no matter how wonderful the vet, I wanted to adopt a dog whose life span would roughly match my fixed income date. I looked on another local site and saw an 8 year old Chessi/Chocolate lab mix ( at least that's what they said -turned out is was more likely Chessie and some kind of terrier) so I made an appointment to meet her. Earlier in the day, she'd been supposed to be placed in a foster home but "didn't get along with the resident dog" - an 11 year old black lab. My thought was - who couldn't get along with an 11 year old lab! We met in a large 'alternative' pet store where I found her very active but manageable, took her on a short walk and returned to the store. Meanwhile, the owner had come from upstairs with her unleashed boxer - and the Chessie provoked a response and then tried to bite the boxer. Turns out this was the second time that had happened that day - the first being a similar incident with the 11 year old lab. I slept on it and decided that this dog was too much for me - that I wouldn't be able to feel safe in my own home let alone guarantee the safety of other when we went on walks. So I decided against it.

(I'm going to post this as more than one posting b/c my computer has a tendency to go nuts at unscheduled times and I don't want this to be lost - it already was once!)

Gretta's mom