Losing a pet
Obi-Wan and I have been blessed to have two great dogs in our lives. We don’t have kids so our energy gets poured into our furry children. Recently, yellow dog, the 10 year old, was diagnosed with cancer and it’s pretty aggressive. This week has been rough for us because she’s been pretty sick and we’re trying to cope with the fact that her time on this planet may be over soon. She is our first dog so we are in unchartered territory here. If she doesn’t improve this weekend, some extremely hard decisions are going to be made and I quite frankly have no idea how to even process it. It’s hard to imagine her not here with us and being that she was my companion during our first deployment 9 years ago, it’s really tough.
I think back to when we first got her and I wasn’t even sure that I liked her. I had no idea what one does with a dog. I didn’t have dogs growing up and it was a huge adjustment to her crazy puppy self and her chewing on everything imaginable and unimaginable. That dog made me yell more colorful metaphors during her first year of life than I thought possible. It took me awhile to appreciate her the way she is – very independent, slightly cantankerous, but very affectionate when she wants to be. I never knew I could love an animal this much and now I can’t imagine her not here. She’s tested my patience more times than I can count but she’s also been a great companion.
The last few days though have been hard because she hasn’t been her normal self. She’s had some bad tummy troubles and hasn’t really gotten her appetite back and I’m starting to wonder if she will. The vet gave her some IV injections to help calm her stomach so we’ll see tomorrow how she feels. We’ve tried a few rounds of chemo but I don’t think they are helping her and probably making her stomach upset. I walk into a room and her head doesn’t even lift and there is definitely no tail wagging. Obi-Wan cooked some stuff on the grill tonight and instead of hovering by it hoping for something to get magically dropped, she remained on the grass instead. Even after leaving the house and coming back an hour later, she didn’t get up. Before, I could have walked into the garage and come back 10 seconds later and she would throw a huge tail wagging party.
I think this weekend will be pretty telling as to what we should do for her.
