I’m sorry for your loss. I love animals. I’ve always been a shy and somewhat lonely person. Through my loneliness, there is always a constant, my pets. It started off with one dog, Buttons. She is 12, and I worry with each passing year. She has been there through everything, and I just can’t imagine life without her. We now have 4 dogs and 2 cats. It would always seem another one would come along in need of a home or a loving master. I’ve only lost 2 pets. I’ll share one story.
Back when I had just 1 dog and the 2 cats, a little cat started coming to our house. She was a tiny little cat, and she was not friendly. I coaxed her with food and time. Finally, one day, she let me pet her. Instantly, she seemed relaxed to know that someone was nice to her, that someone cared. My Dad and I would walk the dog, and Sheba (as I named her) would follow. As soon as she saw us, her eyes lit up. She would run and rub all around our legs. She would follow us wherever we went. When the weather began to grow colder, we decided to keep her, and we took her to the vet. I remember putting her in the cage and her looking away with a sense of betrayal. I promised we would be back after the vet checked her out and she was spayed. When I came home from school, my mom told me she had feline AIDs. It’s not contagious to humans, but it is extremely contagious to other cats. We couldn’t take her, and vet recommended having her put to sleep. She was apparently in advanced stages of the disease. She was put to sleep while I was at school that day, and I never got to say goodbye. I still feel guilt like I betrayed her, but I cried for a couple days nonstop.
Anyway, you post made me sad. I know the pain you must be going through, and I also know the pain that I went through and will go through when I lose my pets. It is makes you feel better, I read an article in the paper written by a Catholic Priest. He said that all God’s creation is good to him, and God would never throw his creation away never to be seen again. I read a quote that said, “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went”.
A few other dog quotes:
Gloria Allred
“The more I know about men the more I like dogs.”
Charles De Gaulle
“The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”
Diana Black
“If dogs could talk, perhaps we’d find it just as hard to get along with them as we do with people.”
Alexander Pope
“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”
God Bless!
I had a similar story of taking a dog to the vet and not picking it up because of a serious illness. I have felt many times that I really failed the love of that dog. I was too young and immature to deal with this dog’s death. Actually, she was a neighbor’s dog, but came around our house all the time. We hadn’t seen her in a while, she came around, it was obvious she was near death from heart worms. I really regret not being there for her. But at that age, it was easier for me to block it out of my mind than go in with her. It has been 40 years and as I write this tears come to my eyes.