Bear with me.  It’s the last post. 

I’m doing better today.  Yesterday was, well, total crap.  I didn’t expect it to be different.  However, I didn’t expect that watching Mike be so upset would be the difficult part. 

I absolutely loved how the vet handled it.  They have a private room with a big comfy chair and a rug.  We spent about 20 minutes in there just loving on Delilah and trying to calm her down (she pooped on Mike during the 1 mile car ride to the vet’s office).  One of the techs brought in a sheepskin mat and two big towels to make a bed on the floor.  The vet talked to us - she wanted to know what was going on with Delilah.  After explaining about her falling, her arthritis, her mouth tremors, her incontinence, and her general dislike of anything other than sleep, she agreed it was time.  After explaining that they would take Delilah out of the room for a moment while they put in a catheter for her vein, she asked us if we wanted to be there.  We did. 

Once Delilah was back with her bandaged front leg, the vet came back with a sedative.  If it hadn’t been so sad, I would have laughed - within seconds of the sedative going in, Delilah made this weird and happy ‘MMMMmmmmmmm’ sound as she keeled over.  We stretched her out into a comfortable position. The vet said we could stay as long as we wanted and to let her know when we wanted her to inject the medication that would stop her heart.  We got plenty of time to kiss her and pet her.  Once we alerted the vet that we were ready, she came in with two syringes.  Delilah was still sort of awake, but completely relaxed and breathing softly.  Once the first medication was in, it was literally seconds before she passed away.  The vet had warned us that there might be twitching or her chest might expand after she died, but none of that happened.  She just looked like she always does, asleep on the living room floor or passed out in our bedroom. 

I’m really glad I decided to stay because watching her go gave me a lot of peace.  I never doubted we were making the right decision, but there is something very unnatural about “killing” your pet.  After watching it, I wished that people could be so lucky as to choose when they go, stretched out on a big comfy bed, and totally high on sedation before taking the big sleep while people you love hold and talk softly to you.  It’s really quite a contrast after watching Mike’s mom take her last breath after months of suffering from cancer - and ironic how in death we can be more humane to our animals than we can with each other. 

The hardest part has been looking at certain things, like Delilah’s bed.  I had to get rid of it this morning because literally every time I came into the room and saw it empty, I’d start bawling.  I took some of her joint pills over to a neighbor with a 13 year old lab, and dropped off some of the better dog treats and rawhides to another neighbor with a three year old lab.  She’s the one who unfortunately got to see me cry because she was asking me questions about Delilah and I have trouble talking about it right now.  She’s a dog lover so I think she understood. 

Lily and Arden are doing okay.  Lily cried last night, after she went to bed. I’m pretty sure 50% of the tears were a stall tactic to get us back in her bedroom, but 50% were genuine. She said the house felt weird without Delilah and she didn’t like it.  Both of them took pictures of Delilah into their schools today - Arden’s teacher said she carried it around next to her heart between activities.  Those little actions mean so much to me - and even though we often yelled at Delilah to quit breathing in our faces, we all loved her very much. 

By the way, these pictures were taken right before we took her to the vet.  She actually ran across our front lawn for about 10 seconds before deciding she’d rather be inside.  It was great to see her run one last time.