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That depends on what you’ve experienced.

We saved Halla from sure death at 4 weeks old.
A huge prayer thread went on for her.

She did live and we thought she was ‘okay’, except for being a bit quirky.

April 30, another prayer thread went up for her again because she had an “episode”.

$3500 later, we found out she had 85% of her brain filled with water and time was the enemy.

Only a $10K operation gave her any hope..slim as it was.

Still, we tried to raise the money...and fell very short.

May 22, I watched her deterioration finally climax in a horrible, brain frying, screaming seizure.

An hour later, I was holding my getting-herself-back-together-post-seizure heart of hearts baby girl on my lap while a cold, killing needle was shoved in her arm as she fought desperately to stop it.

I do not have words to describe the utter emotional devastation of that.

It almost killed -me-.
I felt her die and something deep inside me died, too.

I *know* everybody says I was a ‘good mommy’ and ‘saved her’ and I wouldn’t trade the time I did have with her [a whole 7 months] for the world but if I had to do it all over again, sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t just walk away from her, a 4 week old pup left semi-conscious in a cold bathtub.

Which would have been less cruel for us both?

To have let her just slip totally into the shock induced near-coma I found her in or the 7 months that ended in heart and soul crushing, screaming horror?

To have her die unconscious and unaware in hervery young, nearly ‘larval state’ or for her to have death forced upon her in a strange place by the people she loved as an 8 month old pup?

I will spend the rest of my life seeing her eyes as she begged me to stop the vet and his needle.

I will spend the rest of my life hating myself for not saving her.

I will spend the rest of my life missing her so much I can barely stand it.

I will spend the rest of my life hating that she didn’t even live to outgrow her ‘puppy knuckles’.

I haven’t even touched upon what it did to hubby as she was his “first dog” or he fact that the nearly $4K bills have, for all intents and purposes, bankrupted us as our business has collapsed under Obama.

I think of Pet Semetery and the old man saying “Sometimes, dead is better”.

It’s my nature to keep stubbornly trying and trying and trying, especially where my dogs are concerned.

I love her desperately, still, but I wonder if I will ever recover from the price I’ve paid, and will always pay, to have her for those 7 short months.

It has broken me in more ways than one.

Even FReepers have noticed that my ‘spirit’ is dimmed.

Sometimes, you get handed a hopeless proposition and all you do if you charge up that hill anyway is hurt yourself and prolong the suffering of an innocent animal.

Was she ‘happy”?
Oh, yes..in the way that only severely brain impaired innocents can be.
Did she ‘hurt’ all that time?
Probably.
Congenital hydrocephalus causes terrible headaches [among other awful problems] and it KILLS me to know that she never ‘knew any different’ since pain was her ‘normal’ state.

I loved that little angel more than my own life...but if I knew then what I know now, I would have let her go in peace while she wasn’t even aware of anything, yet.

Nothing is ever black and white/either, or.

That was a hard, HARD lesson for me to learn.

The sad part is, I’m so damned stupid that I *know* if the situation comes around again, I’ll probably bring another hopelessly broken thing home.

It’s who am I...for better or worse.

The only cold comfort I have is the hope that I will see her again, someday.