A week or so ago a gentleman was in the shop with his wife and mentioned my absence from blogging. I told him that lately, with Honey so ill, my thoughts are steeped in sadness and how I don’t want to fill the pages with gloom. He said he reads my blogs, enjoys them and hopes I get back to it soon. I was touched and felt a little guilty. Sometimes my life swallows me up and refuses to spit me out. I try to fight the darkness that consumes me, but while I can still see beauty all around me, I can’t seem to feel it. The numbness that accompanies the sadness it is a cross I bear.
Things are coming to the end for my beloved girl as death taunts her now with the relentlessness of a dog with a bone. My days are filled with teary reminders that soon my little peanut won’t be giving me kisses or those big beautiful eyes won’t be following my every move. I feel so badly for her, she loves life and her family. She loves working at the shop greeting the customers that venture in. She’s a bright spot in a lot of people’s day. I thrilled that blogging will immortalize her, she’s known all over the world. People come in from different countries and say, “That’s Honey!” What a special little girl you have been, a princess of people’s hearts, the Lady Diana of pups. And like her, you too will die while still beautiful and well before your time.
Honey, my constant companion for 12 years, we’ve been through a lot of good times and of course some bad. She warmed the counter while watching my shop grow from the humble beginnings of one room to where we are today. She was beside me, comforting me, when we lost Louis after a tragic accident. She has been by my side when hubby is away at work so I never feel lonely. She is one of my best friends, always there for me, up late at night when I struggle to sleep, snuggled close when I’m feeling under the weather. I tell her my secrets and she never betrays me. She handled our boat like a seasoned sailor. She loves company, hauling out the Welcome Waggin, her tail spinning like a top. She was full of social skills, for both people and all dogs.
The heartbreak of losing her is no surprise; they come with that guarantee as a puppy. I didn’t have my head in the sand; ripe from losing our German Shepherd, I knew it was inevitable when our beloved pet’s lifespans don't equal ours. They say the price of love is sorrow and of course that is part of it, but the joy they bring makes it so very worthwhile, and the reason why we do it over and over again.
So it’s time. I’m forced to deal with things, think thoughts I don’t want to think and face the big looming inevitable. I’m okay with death and bodies; it’s not seeing that sweet little face again that shreds my heart. It’s her absence I dread. Death is as much a part of life as birth, although one hopes that there is plenty of filler in between. But it’s never enough is it? No matter how much time we have, all we want is more, another day, an hour, two minutes.
It’s been a roller coaster ride to the end. I think she’s ready and then she does something hopeful, finds a burst of energy to run after a ball or shakes a squeaky toy, eats out of the bowl instead of being spoon fed against her will. Then I second guess what I know, replacing it with what I feel. The big internal debate, do I set her free on a good day or a bad day? To me, it seems like murder on a good day and mercy on a bad one. I’ve been flip-flopping back and forth; trying to make the right decision and just when I think I’m ready to commit, my heart gets involved and overrules my head.
That is until today. After she had an uncomfortable night, of watching her struggle to breathe, I faced facts this morning and made the appointment. Then she surprised me by eating on her own, not much but enough nibbles to sustain her, but I won’t waver, I can’t waver, she is frail, skin and bone, she makes little noises when I pick her up indicating pain. She sleeps so much now, as if it’s a cure for a failing heart. Her eyes, although always on me are now sad, the spark has burned out. I know it’s time, to be exact, tomorrow at 5:30 PM, we will say our goodbyes and my tears will soak her little head for the last time.
I don’t do death well, there’s a part of me that can’t let go, mourning to pathetic proportions. I don’t have much experience watching people grieve, so I’m not well versed in the subtleties of it all. How I should act? What’s deemed acceptable in duration? I kind of go off the rails, led by my aching heart. Over the top and not far from the edge, that’s me. I’m the kind of person people shake their heads at; tell me I’m loved despite my quirks.
The truth is, I literally want to die when one of my babies pass. With Louis I crawled into my bed for three months and cried myself sick. His death was a tragic accident; he was bitten by a black widow spider in the woodpile. One day I was on top of the world and the next I fell headlong into a dark abyss. I had no time to adjust or prepare like I have with Honey’s long illness, not that time makes it any easier. But I will be better able to function, get on with life sooner, go to work although tears will be at the ready, lingering at the ducts waiting for one of a thousand emotional triggers to let loose the flood gates. I’ll leave the mascara in the drawer and tissues in my pocket for a while. I know she wouldn’t want me to be sad or cry, but I’m not as brave as she is….
My fear has kept me awake nights, dozens of times reaching out to see if she is breathing, if that enlarged heart is still beating; sometimes when she is really close to me, I can feel the vibration of it in the night. But I’m also torn, hoping she is gone when I touch her, cold and empty of her essence naturally. All along I’ve hoped I wouldn’t have to decide her fate; I wanted it to be a natural passing, on her own terms and peaceful.
I’m not oblivious to some who think I am well over the top, I know some pets are not treated like anything more than chattel. One woman told me they put their dog down after it had a seizure and threw up some blood. She complained that it took a week to get the stain out of the carpet. My God, I thought, that poor baby. My Honey has been peeing the bed since they put her on diuretics a year ago. I’ve never done so much laundry in my life; and you all know how I dislike laundry! I’ve cleaned up the occasional diarrhea that’s part and parcel of medications, I’ve set the alarm once and sometimes twice to get up through the night to take her outside so she doesn’t have to lie in discomfort with a swollen bladder, reducing what little sleep I seem to get but never too tired to kiss her on the way back to bed and assure her she is loved. I always gave her as much water as she can drink, never worrying about the wet blankets and quite frankly, that might be the reason she hung on for so long, instead of dehydrating from the drugs that don't discriminate where they took fluid from, I made sure she had plenty of reserve. I’ve massaged her twice daily, morning and night, cooked her favourite foods, bought her endless grocery store roasted chickens because the last few months she only wanted to eat knuckles. I carried her from pillar to post, through the heat of summer and the hot flashes her warm body created. I’ve not eaten in a restaurant or left her alone for five minutes in almost a year, turned down social events because I would never leave her alone, she was the center of my universe for as long as she needed to be. I begrudged nothing, I’ve had no complaints, and I’ve felt no inconvenience. For me she is family, adopted into my life and treasured as much as human flesh and blood. She was never a burden and for me, putting her down was never an option.....until pain got involved.
I get far more from my babies than they get from me, the unconditional love is limitless, and having four poodles, my cup runneth over with liquid gold. Holding one of their tiny bodies in my arms a parental warmth washes over me, I’m their mother in every sense of the word. I would do anything for them.
I’ve spent the day crying and holding her. I tremble knowing what tomorrow will take from us both. My eyes are swollen; my left eyelid has exploded with ulcers, burned by acidic, salty tears. The lid is red, ripped apart and bleeding as grief flows from my body through this small conduit. I’m a sight for sore eyes but my Honey doesn’t mind, she licks my hand and snuggles up to me as if I’m the most important thing in the world and to her I am, so it shatters my heart into a million pieces knowing I’m the one calling the shots that will end her life.
I’ve been in a constant stasis of grief for a year, I’ve been sad since her diagnosis. Every faint, every cough, every stumble breaks me. I feel so badly for her and I hate that I can’t fix her. She has outlived the expectations of our vet; they are amazed she has hung around considering she has been in the last stages of Congestive Heart Failure since that fateful appointment back in November. She’s almost made it a year, saw her 12th birthday in September, things were to the point where I hoped Christmas might be possible, but now I think we’ve done all we can and love is no longer a good enough reason for either of us to hold on.
I whisper in her ear that she should die on her own terms, but she refuses to leave me, her hoes and bros, her daddy. Even as I write this she stares at me, sometimes winking her left eye as if she knows. She still follows me wherever I am in the house, our bond an invisible tether.
Her heart beats on, steady and loud; it shakes her body, rocking it back and forth. Her lungs are clear and she still breathes deeply, the problem is with her abdomen, it’s filled with fluid, pressing on her lungs and causes breathing problems. She eats less, her stomach is squeezed by the fluid. We had the liquid removed once, a traumatic event for Honey which failed to drain enough of the fluid to do any good and afterwards her entire abdomen turned black from bruising. It was tender and sore and I swore I wouldn’t do that again. No heroic measures, they aren’t worth frightening her only to grab a few more days of reprieve. She doesn’t understand we are trying to save her. We can’t communicate that, all she sees and feels is the pain of needles, the sterile, frightening environment and strangers poking and prodding, forcing her on her back for x-rays and the awful horse sized pills she has to ingest twice a day. When the technicians whisk her away from me for procedures, she stresses, her heart beats even faster threatening to explode and I’m on pins and needles until she returns to my arms. She shakes like a bobble head, pulled and pushed to and fro by the pounding of her enlarged heart. Animals don’t understand the world of medicine, this is not a part of their natural, instinctive world. In the wild they get sick, crawl away, find a hole and die and accept it readily as their fate.
Tomorrow I plan to take her to the beach; she loves the smells of salt air, seaweed and dried sea creatures buried in the rocks. She loves to sit and watch the ebb and flow of the ocean, she loves the breeze tugging her ears as she stares off into the horizon. It will be a rough day for me counting down the hours. I will be held hostage by grief until she is gone only then can I slowly emerge from the sadness. I will rejoice that she was in my life and know that I gave her the best possible existence any little dog could imagine. She hit the puppy lottery with me as her mom and I think she knows it. I have nothing to be ashamed of and every reason to be proud of the care and love her daddy and I have given her.
My sweet girl will never be far from my thoughts; my love is not the kind that fades away. I just turn a page to a new chapter; the previous chapters will always remain intact, emotions and all. I love all my babies that have gone before me, deeper than words can express, they will always be a part of me, their beautiful faces etched on my memory; all I have to do is close my eyes to see them.
Max, my German Shepard, now gone 15 years, his leather collar still hangs on the backdoor doorknob. It jingles every time the door opens and fills me with comfort. I snipped a curl of Honey’s tail hair, a piece of her that will bring comfort as well, added next to Louis’s photograph on a kitchen shelf, my white toy poodle boy, who only lived on this earth for two short but precious years before he was taken, I forge a bond as strong as steel with my animal babies that can never be broken…..
“We, who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way.” ........Irving Townsend
Things are coming to the end for my beloved girl as death taunts her now with the relentlessness of a dog with a bone. My days are filled with teary reminders that soon my little peanut won’t be giving me kisses or those big beautiful eyes won’t be following my every move. I feel so badly for her, she loves life and her family. She loves working at the shop greeting the customers that venture in. She’s a bright spot in a lot of people’s day. I thrilled that blogging will immortalize her, she’s known all over the world. People come in from different countries and say, “That’s Honey!” What a special little girl you have been, a princess of people’s hearts, the Lady Diana of pups. And like her, you too will die while still beautiful and well before your time.
Honey, my constant companion for 12 years, we’ve been through a lot of good times and of course some bad. She warmed the counter while watching my shop grow from the humble beginnings of one room to where we are today. She was beside me, comforting me, when we lost Louis after a tragic accident. She has been by my side when hubby is away at work so I never feel lonely. She is one of my best friends, always there for me, up late at night when I struggle to sleep, snuggled close when I’m feeling under the weather. I tell her my secrets and she never betrays me. She handled our boat like a seasoned sailor. She loves company, hauling out the Welcome Waggin, her tail spinning like a top. She was full of social skills, for both people and all dogs.
The heartbreak of losing her is no surprise; they come with that guarantee as a puppy. I didn’t have my head in the sand; ripe from losing our German Shepherd, I knew it was inevitable when our beloved pet’s lifespans don't equal ours. They say the price of love is sorrow and of course that is part of it, but the joy they bring makes it so very worthwhile, and the reason why we do it over and over again.
So it’s time. I’m forced to deal with things, think thoughts I don’t want to think and face the big looming inevitable. I’m okay with death and bodies; it’s not seeing that sweet little face again that shreds my heart. It’s her absence I dread. Death is as much a part of life as birth, although one hopes that there is plenty of filler in between. But it’s never enough is it? No matter how much time we have, all we want is more, another day, an hour, two minutes.
It’s been a roller coaster ride to the end. I think she’s ready and then she does something hopeful, finds a burst of energy to run after a ball or shakes a squeaky toy, eats out of the bowl instead of being spoon fed against her will. Then I second guess what I know, replacing it with what I feel. The big internal debate, do I set her free on a good day or a bad day? To me, it seems like murder on a good day and mercy on a bad one. I’ve been flip-flopping back and forth; trying to make the right decision and just when I think I’m ready to commit, my heart gets involved and overrules my head.
That is until today. After she had an uncomfortable night, of watching her struggle to breathe, I faced facts this morning and made the appointment. Then she surprised me by eating on her own, not much but enough nibbles to sustain her, but I won’t waver, I can’t waver, she is frail, skin and bone, she makes little noises when I pick her up indicating pain. She sleeps so much now, as if it’s a cure for a failing heart. Her eyes, although always on me are now sad, the spark has burned out. I know it’s time, to be exact, tomorrow at 5:30 PM, we will say our goodbyes and my tears will soak her little head for the last time.
I don’t do death well, there’s a part of me that can’t let go, mourning to pathetic proportions. I don’t have much experience watching people grieve, so I’m not well versed in the subtleties of it all. How I should act? What’s deemed acceptable in duration? I kind of go off the rails, led by my aching heart. Over the top and not far from the edge, that’s me. I’m the kind of person people shake their heads at; tell me I’m loved despite my quirks.
The truth is, I literally want to die when one of my babies pass. With Louis I crawled into my bed for three months and cried myself sick. His death was a tragic accident; he was bitten by a black widow spider in the woodpile. One day I was on top of the world and the next I fell headlong into a dark abyss. I had no time to adjust or prepare like I have with Honey’s long illness, not that time makes it any easier. But I will be better able to function, get on with life sooner, go to work although tears will be at the ready, lingering at the ducts waiting for one of a thousand emotional triggers to let loose the flood gates. I’ll leave the mascara in the drawer and tissues in my pocket for a while. I know she wouldn’t want me to be sad or cry, but I’m not as brave as she is….
My fear has kept me awake nights, dozens of times reaching out to see if she is breathing, if that enlarged heart is still beating; sometimes when she is really close to me, I can feel the vibration of it in the night. But I’m also torn, hoping she is gone when I touch her, cold and empty of her essence naturally. All along I’ve hoped I wouldn’t have to decide her fate; I wanted it to be a natural passing, on her own terms and peaceful.
I’m not oblivious to some who think I am well over the top, I know some pets are not treated like anything more than chattel. One woman told me they put their dog down after it had a seizure and threw up some blood. She complained that it took a week to get the stain out of the carpet. My God, I thought, that poor baby. My Honey has been peeing the bed since they put her on diuretics a year ago. I’ve never done so much laundry in my life; and you all know how I dislike laundry! I’ve cleaned up the occasional diarrhea that’s part and parcel of medications, I’ve set the alarm once and sometimes twice to get up through the night to take her outside so she doesn’t have to lie in discomfort with a swollen bladder, reducing what little sleep I seem to get but never too tired to kiss her on the way back to bed and assure her she is loved. I always gave her as much water as she can drink, never worrying about the wet blankets and quite frankly, that might be the reason she hung on for so long, instead of dehydrating from the drugs that don't discriminate where they took fluid from, I made sure she had plenty of reserve. I’ve massaged her twice daily, morning and night, cooked her favourite foods, bought her endless grocery store roasted chickens because the last few months she only wanted to eat knuckles. I carried her from pillar to post, through the heat of summer and the hot flashes her warm body created. I’ve not eaten in a restaurant or left her alone for five minutes in almost a year, turned down social events because I would never leave her alone, she was the center of my universe for as long as she needed to be. I begrudged nothing, I’ve had no complaints, and I’ve felt no inconvenience. For me she is family, adopted into my life and treasured as much as human flesh and blood. She was never a burden and for me, putting her down was never an option.....until pain got involved.
I get far more from my babies than they get from me, the unconditional love is limitless, and having four poodles, my cup runneth over with liquid gold. Holding one of their tiny bodies in my arms a parental warmth washes over me, I’m their mother in every sense of the word. I would do anything for them.
I’ve spent the day crying and holding her. I tremble knowing what tomorrow will take from us both. My eyes are swollen; my left eyelid has exploded with ulcers, burned by acidic, salty tears. The lid is red, ripped apart and bleeding as grief flows from my body through this small conduit. I’m a sight for sore eyes but my Honey doesn’t mind, she licks my hand and snuggles up to me as if I’m the most important thing in the world and to her I am, so it shatters my heart into a million pieces knowing I’m the one calling the shots that will end her life.
I’ve been in a constant stasis of grief for a year, I’ve been sad since her diagnosis. Every faint, every cough, every stumble breaks me. I feel so badly for her and I hate that I can’t fix her. She has outlived the expectations of our vet; they are amazed she has hung around considering she has been in the last stages of Congestive Heart Failure since that fateful appointment back in November. She’s almost made it a year, saw her 12th birthday in September, things were to the point where I hoped Christmas might be possible, but now I think we’ve done all we can and love is no longer a good enough reason for either of us to hold on.
I whisper in her ear that she should die on her own terms, but she refuses to leave me, her hoes and bros, her daddy. Even as I write this she stares at me, sometimes winking her left eye as if she knows. She still follows me wherever I am in the house, our bond an invisible tether.
Her heart beats on, steady and loud; it shakes her body, rocking it back and forth. Her lungs are clear and she still breathes deeply, the problem is with her abdomen, it’s filled with fluid, pressing on her lungs and causes breathing problems. She eats less, her stomach is squeezed by the fluid. We had the liquid removed once, a traumatic event for Honey which failed to drain enough of the fluid to do any good and afterwards her entire abdomen turned black from bruising. It was tender and sore and I swore I wouldn’t do that again. No heroic measures, they aren’t worth frightening her only to grab a few more days of reprieve. She doesn’t understand we are trying to save her. We can’t communicate that, all she sees and feels is the pain of needles, the sterile, frightening environment and strangers poking and prodding, forcing her on her back for x-rays and the awful horse sized pills she has to ingest twice a day. When the technicians whisk her away from me for procedures, she stresses, her heart beats even faster threatening to explode and I’m on pins and needles until she returns to my arms. She shakes like a bobble head, pulled and pushed to and fro by the pounding of her enlarged heart. Animals don’t understand the world of medicine, this is not a part of their natural, instinctive world. In the wild they get sick, crawl away, find a hole and die and accept it readily as their fate.
Tomorrow I plan to take her to the beach; she loves the smells of salt air, seaweed and dried sea creatures buried in the rocks. She loves to sit and watch the ebb and flow of the ocean, she loves the breeze tugging her ears as she stares off into the horizon. It will be a rough day for me counting down the hours. I will be held hostage by grief until she is gone only then can I slowly emerge from the sadness. I will rejoice that she was in my life and know that I gave her the best possible existence any little dog could imagine. She hit the puppy lottery with me as her mom and I think she knows it. I have nothing to be ashamed of and every reason to be proud of the care and love her daddy and I have given her.
My sweet girl will never be far from my thoughts; my love is not the kind that fades away. I just turn a page to a new chapter; the previous chapters will always remain intact, emotions and all. I love all my babies that have gone before me, deeper than words can express, they will always be a part of me, their beautiful faces etched on my memory; all I have to do is close my eyes to see them.
Max, my German Shepard, now gone 15 years, his leather collar still hangs on the backdoor doorknob. It jingles every time the door opens and fills me with comfort. I snipped a curl of Honey’s tail hair, a piece of her that will bring comfort as well, added next to Louis’s photograph on a kitchen shelf, my white toy poodle boy, who only lived on this earth for two short but precious years before he was taken, I forge a bond as strong as steel with my animal babies that can never be broken…..
“We, who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way.” ........Irving Townsend
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