Cheryl

here is poem that my mom sent me when we thought we were going to have to put down my dog.


If it should be
If it should be that i grow weak, And pain should keep me from my sleep, Then you must do what must be done,For this last battle cant be won.

You will be sad, I understand, Dont let your greif then stay your hand, For this day more then the rest,Your love for me must stand the test.

We've had so many happy years, What is to come can hold no fears, You'd not want me to suffer so, The time has come,please let me go.

Take me where my need they'll tend, And please stay with me until the end.

Thank you all so much for your replies and encouraging words. It was a rough night sleeping last night, that's for sure. I think we're going to take the next couple of days to come to grips with what must be done - we'll enjoy these last couple of days to the fullest extent and then we'll say goodnight to Miriya. We will know on Friday what we need to do with Sheba and if the outcome is the same as Miriya's, we will follow suit I guess. This all seems so surreal, like a nightmare. Once again, thank you all for your support - I'm certainly going to need it over the next week or so....

Cheryl, I too have been there and completely understand what you are going through. We put down our Golden-Collie last June due to cancer. My kids were 11 and 7 at the time. My husband and I took Abbey to the vet and had it done there - we knew if the kids were nearby they would lose it and not let the vet do her job. It was, as others have said, very VERY heartbreaking. I held her in my lap for an hour, then laid on the floor with her for another long while. Yes, she was at peace, and inside I was dying. "How could this be the right thing?!" I kept asking myself, but I knew deep down inside she was enduring her pain for me, and I couldn't let her do that any more. She was too graceful and dignified for that. She went peacefully with all the love in the world wrapped around her.

My kids took it very hard. We had Abbey's last meal (white rice with chicken broth - all she could manage to eat near the end) sitting around her dog bed. I slept on the couch that night, as I had done for 2 months while she was so sick, and kept a candle lit for her passing. During the night, I felt her presence near me and could hear her breathing...her last goodbye. In the morning I was much more at peace because I know knew that she was too.

I still cry about her (I am right now) but I know she feels so much better now. I talk to her every day and tell her I love and miss her. I was blessed to be her Mom for 13 years and there will never be another one like her.

Let yourself cry, scream, yell...you SHOULD! Dogs are like kids and when we cannot control what is happening to them, we have every right to be angry and upset. But we all also know that they will not live forever so we have to enjoy our precious time that we do have with them as much as possible. And when the time comes to let them go, we have to be strong enough to let them go peacefully and with dignity. The pain will ease over time but I don't think it will ever truly go away. My heart goes out to you!

Some times its hard to do things. In your heart
you know what has to be done. I hope that some
how you can tell the kids its for the best.
GOD bless you and your dogs.
--------------------------------------------------
Just think of the good times you have had with
them at your side.


Randy

It is so very very hard - this part of sharing the time with an animal. Along with the right to bear their joy and love, we must also bear the burden of this part - it takes a great heart NOT to let them suffer. It would be easier on US, if we let them stay. I imagine just about everyone on this board has lost a pet or two, and it is truly one of the most horrific things.

However, putting them down is the kindest thing we can for them. We cannot do this for ourselves, or our friends, but we can do this for our animals.

Please take heart - you are doing the right thing. Oftentimes the right thing is not always the easiest.

God bless....

Morning All!
Another rough night, worst than the one before. Miriya was bleeding from her nose yesterday and the swelling is getting worse. It's getting hard for her to chew - I gave her a rawhide and she tried like heck but couldn't chew it. I've noticed in her food bowl that she's picking out the real tiny pieces to eat and she's lost a lot of weight. I keep telling myself that this is the right thing to do but when I see her and she's wagging her tail and cooing and carrying her treat or toy around in her mouth I can't help but doubt our decision. I'm telling myself that she's happy to see me (she's my baby) but that doesn't take away from the fact that she's sick. I just feel so bad. How do you ever know if its truly the right decision?!?!?! I think tomorrow is the day...I pray I'm doing the right thing. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
Then on Friday we face another ugly decision...

I'm not sure if this is going to help but here's what went through my mind on my dog's last day of life.

When we woke up that morning, we noticed that Ajax was pacing the house again. When we got up we noticed that he had urinated in the family room. We put him in his crate. When we opened the door about an hour later he just layed in the crate. He didn't even move. Ajax appeared to be very disorientated. We tried to give him chopped up pieces of steak that morning but he still wouldn't eat.

I called the vet and she told me that he needed to be brought in immediately for a more extensive neourology exam.

I had about an hour so before the appointment so I took Ajax out for a walk. Usually this dog when he went for a walk tended to mark just about every bush he came in contact with. All he would do is just brush up against the shrubs and sniff a little bit but he kept acting like he was totally confused.

When we got to the vets office, at that time it was the furthers thing from my mind that I'd put him to sleep, we go into the exam room. The vet does the neuro exam. She palpatates his head and get's the pain response that I told her about on the phone. His eyes were looking considerably worse from yesterday (he had KCS a.k.a dry eye as well). He was having facial paralysis symptoms as well.

The vet then called the ophthomologist and the neurologist in Detroit. The neurologist was thinking that it was a brain lesion and that the next step would be to take Ajax to him for an exam.

While all this was taking place I was in the room with my dog. He continued to pace in the exam room. He would walk into a corner and butt his head against the wall a couple of times before he realized that he needed to turn. During parts of this my dog would look at me, recognize me and wag his tail like normal but I could tell he was in a lot of pain. At one point during all of this, the dog stopped pacing, urinated, and then went back to pacing. It didn't even look like he knew what he had done. The vet told me this was a definite sign of brain disease.

Now came the descision part. From a medical standpoint, the best case treatment option was this: 1) Go see the neurologist who would probably want to do another MRI and spine tap. 2) Assuming the MRI showed something it may have been possible to do an operation to remove the lesion. There were a lot of maybes in having a successful treatment.

The decission to put the vet down was kind of a meeting of the minds between my vet, my girlfriend and myself along with the two specialists. What made up my mind was calculating the odds that even with aggresive treatment that there would be a good outcome versus just letting him go.

First he had to survive the MRI procedure. They have to sedate the dog for that. The MRI would then have to show something. Ajax had a thorough neuro work up last year including an MRI and it didn't show any abnormality. I figured the best case odds were 50/50 for that. It was then 50/50 they could even operate on the thing. Since it was brain surgery you figure it was 50/50 he'd survive and recover. Since the vet wasn't able to give me a specific odds number I figured it was 1 in 10 for a full recovery. I watched my dog for several hours and my gut was telling me was that I couldn't leave him like that. That was no life for a dog.

When I was thinking about putting my dog down and what you may want to think about doing is take an honest look at what can be done medically for the dog. I had thought I had heard that it is possible to operate on a sinus tumor. I'm not sure how successful that can be so you may have an option there if you have the resources to do that type of thing. I'm sure it would be very pricey though because the dog would probably need an MRI/CT scan and that alone is a couple $k. I'd imagine the surgery would be a couple thousand dollars as well. From reading your last post it's obvious that your dog is very uncomfortable. One of the last moments I had with my dog was when he put his head in my lap and was wagging his tail. What I wondered was is he trying to tell me "Dad please don't kill me" or was it "Dad please make the pain stop". I'm not trying to tell you what you should do but as I see it you can either try to find a specialist like a vet neurologist and go down the treatment route if you haven't done that already or you need to let him go. It's not fair to the dog to leave him like that. Up until the very end my dog was wagging his tail when he saw me but I knew he was in a lot of pain. I choose to let him go.

For myself I'm still not sure I did the right thing and it's been a month since it happened. I wonder what if I could have gotten him to eat something. He responded well last year and went into remission when I got him on a natural diet. What if I just had the vet give him pain injections? Would he have recovered again if given a little time etc. etc.

I know it's hard. I'll keep you in my prayers.

Thanks for your response Joel. I feel for your loss of Ajax.

I wish there was an easy decision but there's not. I know what my gut is telling me but my heart isn't agreeing!!!

The vet said that her tumor was probably cancerous and that eventually the meds she was on would stop working. The tumor is getting bigger and the meds have stopped working!! The vet told me basically what Miriya has is inoperable. Due to her age, I'm not sure she would even survive an operation if that was an option. If the treatment for your pet wasn't so d*** expensive, I'm sure there would be MORE alternatives that we could exhaust. In the end though, I fear that the outcome is going to be the same NO MATTER what we do. And again on Friday, we have to make another decision to put our Sheppard down due to the fact that she more than likely has liver disease and can not stop drinking then urinating every 5 minutes. She's barely eating and she looks so depressed. Right now, we are double whammied! We need all the prayers we can get right now. Thank you all for your support!!

Cheryl,

Hope your still hangin in there. I hear you on vet bill expenses. I probably dropped enough money to buy at least one of Ed's dogs and perhaps a good chunk of a second one :-) MRI's are not cheap even with Pet health insurance. I don't regret at all spending the money on him.

I also felt kind of frustrated on Ajax's last day. Even with the insurance it just seemed that no matter what I tried there wasn't going to be a good outcome.

Just out of curiousity was it your regular vet that told you it was inoperable or was it a specialist? The only place I ever heard of operating on something like that was with my vet neurologist that we saw early last year when Ajax's symptoms first appeared. I'm not sure what the cost for treating something like that was but I imagine it was a bundle.

I thought the brochure they had on sinus tumors was kind of interesting because my brothers dog died a couple of years ago from a sinus tumor as well. They really wished they could have done something for him but my brother and his wife just decided it was time.

We have been managing to get through Ajax's death. We adopted a Golden Retriever from the Humane Society a couple of weeks ago. We didn't wait very long. I kind of wanted another GSD and we still may do that. The golden is going to become my first agility dog. It's been something I've wanted to try with a dog for years but because of Ajax's hips he couldn't really do that type of thing. His hips had only slight displaysia but it was enough to keep him out of that. Of course at 8 or 9 years of age that's not exactly the time to be starting that type of thing. I'll say one thing for sure is that if you decide to get another dog they are going to have a really super home to go to.

I know your having a hard time right now, just keep hanging in there. It'll be ok no matter what happens. Perhaps your dogs will look up mine in heaven and they can play for awhile.

Take care....

Dear Joel - you are truly an inspiration. I'm still hangin' in here. Getting ready to camp out with Miriya for her last day here at home...words can't even express how I feel inside.

Our vet consulted with a specialist on both of our dogs - the outcome being the same. As I said (or at least I think I said) in a prior post, even if surgery was an option, I don't know if her old bones would be able to survive such trauma. And if they did, would we have put her through all of that just for the op to have solved nothing? Believe me, I have been over (and over and over) all the scenarios and unfortunately can not paint a happy ending. It will kill me to do what we have to do tomorrow but I can't let her suffer. And even though she can't tell me she's suffering, I can't imagine that with a tumor the size of the one she has can be anything but painful.

And Sheba, poor Sheba - our Sheppard. I'm taking her Friday for a "second opinion" but I think I'm doing it more for me so I can be sure that I've exhausted everything I could. I fear that we will be saying good night to her by Monday. It's just not fair!!!!!!!!!!

You mentioned getting another dog, welp, we already have one (we have 3 dogs all together). Buddy, our mutt, the one that has no papers and didn't cost a dime will live to be a hundred - LOL. I feel for him, too because he has known nothing except being with these other two dogs. We will have to concentrate and put all of our love into him now (along with Sebastian our cat).

I feel like I'm rambling, I feel so confused and hurt and angry...all these emotions wrapped up inside of me, ready to explode.

Thanks for listening!!