A change of heart
So much for the best laid plans and all of that.
I just can’t do it.
How can I possibly phone the vet and tell them I want to end my dog’s life?
If she were in obvious pain, or if the had been hit by a bus and was a load of broken bones it would be different of course.
But she isn’t in pain so far as I can tell. It’s hard to know because she shows no outward sign. She is just in her own little world that asks only three things. She wants to sleep peacefully in her bed, she wants to sniff the air occasionally at an open door and she wants to sleep on my bed at night.
Last night she was asleep in her bed as I was shutting off the lights. I went to bed leaving the doors open a crack. I was reading in bed when she quietly came in. She had obviously woken and found all the lights off. So I lifted her onto the bed and she snuggled down happily.
This morning she woke me by gently poking my face with a cold wet nose. I told her to bugger off.
A while later she woke me again by falling off the bed. I got up, let her out to the front garden for her morning pee [always a real torrent”]. she happily trotted off around to the back door where I was waiting for her with her morning medication and a treat.
How could I murder that?
Your logic sounds reasonable Grandad. Poor old Penny doesn’t need or want much at the moment, and so long as you can see that she is reasonably happy, just keep loving her. Good on you.
You have my respect
What can I say more, I feel your pain.
JohnC
My dad used to say that dogs will start ‘looking around’, when they know that it’s time for them to hang up the old lead!
It doesn’t sound as though Penny is going through that at all, she’s just showing symptoms of old age, and don’t I know the feeling!
It’s never, ever easy.
But when it’s right, it’ll feel right.
And in the meantime she’s warm, cared for, and – on her own terms – loving.
Good decision pro tem.
Your heart (not brain) will know when it is right for Penny
I feel your pain, old fella. My dog, Loki, toward the end, was almost blind and totally deaf. It was pitiful to watch as he navigated the house by leaning on the wall. He got comfort when we placed him on the cold, dewy grass in the morn. I was away for work when my wife phoned to say that the tests indicated that he was in end-stage kidney failure. He was put down before I could get home. As the vet said, and I agree, it was ‘cruel to keep him going’. He is buried in the front garden, and I miss him very much. I’ve always lived by the dictum that only women and children cry, but I do confess that when my dog died, a piece of onion became lodged in my tear duct.
Just had a vet’s visit with our old Collie – she said he’s not bad for 13 (91), just a bit of arthritis and a heart murmur. But she said,”no more chasing balls or his heart could fail”. It’ll be a heart-wrenching decision if/when he gets like Penny.