Tonight was not a night that I thought would end with me putting our little dog to sleep. Oh, I suppose I should have seen it coming. The coughing was getting worse. The wheezing. The breathing was bad. The heart was pounding. We all (including his vet) thought it was just excess fluid on his lungs. He had congestive heart failure and a heart murmur (which, I didn't learn until tonight, has varying degrees of severity and his was a 5 out of 6) and bad teeth and who knows how many other ailments. He kept on keeping on though. We thought the furosemide (a type of diuretic remove excess fluid) would work.
Yeah. We were wrong. Well, almost wrong, I guess.
I don't know. I'm writing this through swollen eyes and smudged glasses, but I need to get it out because I'm beating myself up inside. Hard.
We took him to the emergency vet when he would. not. stop. coughing. He literally sounded like he was going to hack up a lung.
We got him there. They took him back. The tech came back out to talk to us about options and if he had ever seen a cardiologist.
No. I had (now that I think about it) discussed it with his vet at the outset of his chf/heart murmur diagnosis two years ago, but she said that as long as he responded to any meds given, it was not necessary. Also, there is only one dog cardiologist in the city, and it takes months to see him (and a lot of money, of course).
And it wasn't necessary I guess, until two weeks ago.
The vet came to talk to us. We had two options. Well, three. But I'll get to that in a minute.
The first option was to leave him at the hospital overnight to see if he would respond to an oxygen cage, IV fluids, and IV furosemide to get him peeing out fluid. There would also be bloodwork and xrays and other stuff.
The second option would be to drive him an hour away to a bigger hospital where there was an internist and other access to cardiology equipment and the like. He would also have to stay overnight.
Both of these options ran between $1500-3000+.
Then there was the last option. A final option. The option neither I nor my husband wanted to bring up.
But we did.
Euthanasia.
This is the part where I feel so wretched.
We chose that final option.
And oh my god, I am regretting it so much now.
I know I was told that even if we had chose one of the first two options, there was no guarantee. He was sick. He looked sick. He looked tired, even though he would perk up off and on during the day. He could not get comfortable. He could not sleep.
But I feel guilty. Like I took the easy option. Like he wasn't worth that amount of money.
I should have moved mountains for him. I should have maxed out every single card I had for him. I should have moved heaven and earth for that little pup who did nothing but love us with every inch of his tiny little body.
But I didn't. I let him die. I let them inject my dog, my Tequila, with the drugs to make him sleep forever.
The technicians and vets were wonderful. They explained everything to us. They tried to make us feel at ease. They gave us pamphlets and copies of the Rainbow Bridge poem. They are making a clay imprint of Tequila's paw. We go to pick it up in a few days.
He died in my arms. I held him until the last. I felt like that was the least I could do for him after sending him to death. They had wrapped him in a blanket. He was partially sedated when they handed him to me. He whimpered a bit, but it took effect quickly.
And then he gave that final last loud sigh and was gone.
I don't have much to say beyond this. I wanted to do a nice post about him and some lovely pictures of his life.
But not tonight, because I cannot get that sigh out of my head. I cannot erase the fucking picture seared in my mind of his lifeless body as I handed him to the tech so he could be sent to be cremated.
Guilt is the order of the night. Guilt and grief and so much sorrow.
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