Grief

Sometimes grief enters your life when you least expect it.
Seventeen years with a loving dog and then one day the harbinger of a a process that leads to the most difficult decision you will ever have to make.

Seventeen years is a long time with a dog. Seventeen years of enjoyment and communication with another sentient being who’s whole world centers on protecting you from interlopers, jets at 35,000 feet and leaves moving when that were not expected to move.
You form a bond of family and banish the thought that this could ever end but it does.
How is it possible for this to end where you alone bear the responsibility for either providing heroic care for this loved one or do you go with the recommended program leading to the session of life?
That decision is worse than the death itself.

Seventeen years and a month and suddenly something is wrong and things spiral out of any sense of control.
You go to the vet expecting that this is just a minor issue but it is not.
Blood work, analysis and the hurried and strained phone call that your dog is in terminal renal failure and the world is about to be turned upside down.
There must be a way out of this!
No, there isn’t!
How could things happen like this without any sign?
It can and does and in reality there were signs but you didn’t see them while marveling and laughing at the dog barking at a jet at 35,000 feet.

You have a god decision to make!
This isn’t fair!
There must be something I can do!
How could I not have seen what was happening? Weight loss, slowed response (He’s old isn’t he and that is normal!).
Is he suffering?
This is the worst question you can ever ask!
Why?
It is the worst question you can ask if the answer is that he is likely not suffering and is just going to fade out  due to the renal failure.
That answer just took away all your cover.
You now have to face the fact that you must make the decision to euthanize the dog while they are still coherent and not really suffering.
They will die if you do nothing and maybe the death might not be pain free but what if it was completely pain free and you ended their life before that point?
God decisions are doomed to being wrong!
You simply cannot know if you are doing the right thing.

You hear the vet telling you that it is in the best interest of the animal to euthanize.
How can death be the best decision?
The dog is looking at you and you feel like the worst thing you could ever do is to agree with the vet’s point of view. You know the Vet is right most of the time in what she is saying but is she right with this dog and at this time?

You aren’t a very good god!
You don’t have any idea if the right decision is as the vet says and you haven’t got a clue if going against that logic is the right way to go.
You ask the only question you can ask.

Is there any hope?

Dave Demarey