re: OT'ers who have had to put an elderly pet down

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Her hearing is all but gone, she has trouble sometimes keeping food and water down, she shakes a good bit at times, and is becoming frail. She has good days and bad days.

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You basically decrived my wife's dog. She's 17 and also has horrid arthritis, kidney issues, a heart murmur, and falls constantly.

To me, I look at her and feel like she's suffering. My wife loves her, but has convinced herself that maybe it's not that bad. In reality she just keeps hoping that our dog will simply not wake up one day.

Lost my 16 year old Lab almost a year ago. She was in pretty good shape until her last couple of months, but she was slowly declining. Her last 7 weeks I was by her side pretty much constantly (I work from home most of the time, so I could do that.) She always had a good appetite up to the end, and until the last day or two she liked to go for short walks. But she had bad arthritis, was in a lot of pain, and had dementia. I don't think she knew where she was a lot of the time, but she still liked to be petted.

I go back and forth over whether I waited too long. Maybe so, I loved her so much I just couldn't bear to do it. If so, I hope she will forgive me. Her death put me in a tailspin. for a few months. Her ashes are in a little wooden box with her name on it. They will be buried or cremated with me.

Yes, if they are like the hospice programs here in SC, they will euthanize your pet at home, where they are most comfortable. Our daschund, bc of the adrenal gland tumor, would be in particularly horrid pain when driven to the specialist about an hour and a half away. The tumor would cause his system to flood his body with adrenaline which just intensified his pain. Having the hospice option was a Godsend bc otherwise, his last day with us would have included that horrible car ride as one of his final memories.

We had him buried in the backyard, had a gravestone marker made for him, and have flowers planted around his grave.

Our other dachshund, who is 17 and still going as strong as ever much to his vet's amazement, still refuses to go near where his buddy of ten years is buried and he has been depressed since Baby died. It's hurting him to have lost Baby just like it's hurting us. Every day gets a little better for him it seems, but for a week solid, anytime he was outside he would sit on the porch staring out at the driveway as if watching, waiting and hoping that Baby would return home.