June 24
We woke up today dogless for the first time in 21 years. Yesterday we brought our dog to be euthanized. It was not something we wanted to do, but we knew it was best for her. She would get crazy in the truck and hating being out of her routine. Even while she was still with us, she knew something was going on as we ran around getting ready to leave and the boxes piled up. She did not do well with other people when we were not there, so we couldn’t try to find her a new home. She was 12 ½ and was slowing down. When the vet felt her leg just before she gave Miki the injection, she said she had a small tumor. She had a good life and a peaceful death, even though she was agitated in the 15 minutes before she went to sleep. We’ve spent a lot of time crying. Last night my sinuses were killing me as I lay in bed until after 2 a.m. not sleeping. It was something we dreaded, but knew we had to do. It is hard to believe she’s not here anymore--we keep thinking we see her or hear her tags jangling. Both of us are glad that we are leaving tomorrow so that we don’t have to be constantly reminded that she’s not here. Bill woke up at 4 a.m.--the time he would usually get up to let her outside. We came home from having dinner with a friend and she wasn’t shoving the drapes aside with her nose to look out the window. Both of us got into bed and lay at an angle, leaving a space at the bottom in the center where she would normally be sleeping. I realized today that it has been a decade of loss--animals that we had for some years began to die and though we had other animals, the pain is still there. I found myself thinking that since we will not have any four-legged-furry people of our own for awhile, I will not have to feel this again, at least for some time. There was a sense of relief in that.
We took some of her fur and that of the dog we lost a year and a half ago and scattered it in the peace garden at church.
