Trying To Help Kids Through This

We had to put our greyhound, Bear, down two nights ago. He was almost 11 and had osteosarcoma in his neck. I adopted his mother when she was pregnant and he was a bottle raised baby. He was my heart dog.

This is hard enough if it was just me. I think I'm doing ok for awhile then some random song, memory, anything hits me like a truck and I'm sobbing. But on top of it all I've got two kids, one of which is taking it very hard. It's near impossible to be strong when you feel like you've been evicerated.

J spent most of the day crying off and on today. She's 5, so a limited understanding of it all. We pulled out all of the photos we had of him and she picked a favorite that I put in a frame to carry around the house. The clinic gave me a kids book, "Dog Heaven" which I think helped a lot. Earlier today she painted him a portrait then we burned it so the ashes would "go up the chimney to heaven".

Other than time, any other suggestions or thoughts?

Dani