Life goes on even as you try to live it, and so even as I was dealing with relationship drama, as well as drama at my work, drama with my home, and drama to do with my granddaughter, my dog took sick.
He started off with a limp that they first thought was arthritis. But when it didn't get any better with arthritis medications, a second trip to the veterinarian found cancerous tumors around his shoulder. He had about a month to live, four if I had them cut his shoulder and leg off.
I chose to let him live out his month and he did. He took pain medication for a while and felt good enough to get one more walk around the neighborhood, something I had been promising him for a long time. He stopped eating in the last week and a half of his life and stopped taking medicine. He was wasting away from malnutrition and vomiting up the water he would try to drink. I decided that as much as I didn't want him to die, I didn't want to watch him die of starvation either.
So on a sunny Monday morning, I took the day off from work and I said goodbye to my dog. I still to this moment feel guilty about killing him. I will probably feel that way until I die. I believe it was the right thing to do, but I don't feel like it.
It has been hard for me to adjust to him not being here, but I am beginning to. It still feels like he is here with me, watching me as I go about my day, as even before the illness his life pretty much consisted of lying there and watching me. He was 12 years old, after all, which is pretty far along as far as dogs go.
Totally apart from all of this, I have noticed that I am a little weightier than I would like these days and I am having some issues with my back muscles, so I have decided to take a nightly walk to try and get past both of those things. While my neighborhood is perfectly safe, I still wish I had my favorite company with me, because I know he would have loved it.
And if there is anything beyond this life, he does.
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