Quote:
Originally Posted by Vowel Lady
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This has been a very difficult morning.
Many years ago, we adopted a stray dalmation. Hard to say his age. Older than a puppy...Maybe a year or two in age.
He had been terrorizing my daughter's friend's family because they had cats. They had threated to call the pound.
The problem was that he had not collar, seem to be beaten, and had a broken leg.We knew in our hearts that no one would adopt him.
My daughter begged me to take him and I did.
We took him to the vet, put a cast on his leg and nursed him back to health.
The weird thing about him is that although he was lovable to my dau and I, he hated men. I mean hated them. It took a long time for him accept my husband and son, but until old age set in, those were the only two men he gave a pass to. This, in some ways, came in handy. When my husband would work at night, I often felt kinda safe having this big male dalmation around. He stayed outside usually during the day. Outside, he had a big dog house under a tree. We kept him outside a lot because he was not fully housebroken. And if he got jealous of our other pets, he would sometimes "mark" furniture! However, we brought him inside during the day when the weather was bad, including very hot weather. I also brought him inside if I was frightened. He came inside at night and had this big thick rug he laid on under the piano. That was his Kingdom. He had a very "elegant" evening "dog house."
It's been well over a decade. He's had various health problems. He became deaf. He has had trouble seeing. The broken leg never healed correctly and he had great difficulty walking. This led to a bad hip problem. He's had trouble breathing lately. He lost total control of his toiletry habits. His pain has increased in recent weeks and he has been wimpering...which is unusual for him.
This morning, we had him put to sleep. We waited for the doctor to give him the first shot to relax him. We told him that we loved him and he was a good boy. Then we left. It has been very hard and we have not stopped crying.
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We do have his collar and I am wondering what others have done to memoralize their lost pets.
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I'm so sorry for your loss. I also have an aging dog. Tanner...she's been with us for about 16 yrs since she was a pup. I wouldn't trade her for anything in the world. But time has passed and her job is almost finished here with us. She sleeps most of the day and then wakes up to eat a little and go outside. She wimpers all night so I started giving her dog asprin and that's helped. She's been injured years ago by another dog that attacked her and did some damage to her hips so she holds one leg up when she runs or walks. She's going blind and can't hear well. I keep tending to her, bathes, brushing her gently, petting her and now I have to use sign language so she knows what I want her to do. But she's part of our family and I can't yet seem to let her go...she's all we have left of our children's lives..since they've all grown and moved out. She holds all the perfect memories we have of our children growing up. I understand how difficult it was for you to have your pet put down, we also had to put down a cat that we had for years, she had some kind of bacterial infection that the vet could not heal her of...she was in so much pain and could not go in the litter box without straining so hard. Sometimes I thought I could see tears in her eyes so that's when we put her down. We buried her in our back yard...that was way back when you could...and put up a cross over her grave. I think that if you write a ulogy about your pet and then put it in a boxed frame with it's collar and a picture you would do it justice. Every day you would see it as you passed the picture and would feel the love it gave to you.
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