My dog Zander was an 11 year old Shih-Tzu. He was our sweet boy and we loved him like a baby his entire life. His was an extremely healthy dog until last Fall when he developed panniculitis. It was a horrific skin infection but he maintained his happy go lucky attitude even though he hated taking so many pills every day.
Three weeks ago he developed a random case of pneumonia. It was mid week right before we would be leaving for a week long vacation. He went three times to get fluids and was put on steroids and antibiotics. The Friday before our trip I got the vibe that something was very wrong and we had made the difficult decision that we would put him to sleep. When the vet caught wind she said why, he is great, his breath sounds have increased 85% and he is a different dog. We were elated!! I pushed off my instinct and dropped him with a friend who is a vet tech to pet sit.
The next morning as I was rushing to my flight I got a call. Our friend asked if we wanted to speak to her vet now or wait until we landed. I didn't expect anything tragic to be spoken so I went ahead and talked to her. That is when she started talking about a diagnosis with his lungs that made my mind go numb. Something that couldn't be fixed, and how did the other vet miss it? I was in complete shock and as I slowly moved towards the plane I knew things were not going to end well. I gained my composure and when we landed I called back with more questions. I was told he was stable but he could pass away at any time. All we wanted was to make sure he was not alone when he passed. As silly as it sounds, we decided to facetime our dog that afternoon. He was alert and perky and responded with a little head tilt when he heard us. We told her we did not want him to suffer so if it did come down to him needing to sleep we agreed, though we hoped he would wait for us. Our friend who was caring for him would need to leave him that evening for 5 hours and I just prayed he was still breathing when she got home. The next morning we got the call. He needed to go in. I called my mom immediately and she rushed to his side so he would be with someone familiar and not be alone. We talked to him one more time on the phone and he sounded terrible. We were devastated but knew we were making the right call.
Flash forward to today, and everyday since. The guilt is immense and painful. It literally feels like my gut and heart are being pulled out of my chest. How did we miss it? How did we not know? Over and over in my mind, especially at night when everyone else sleeps and he would have been my companion. People say that dogs are pack animals and they go off to die, and I respect that maybe he did it because we were gone, but I am still mad. I just don't know how to heal and move forward. I can keep crying every single day, or be happy that we had such a wonderful time with a wonderful dog.
This is where you all come in. Do you have any website recommendations or perhaps books I could read that could ease me out of this pain and into some joy again? There are so many out there and I am just not sure where to start.
Thanks for reading,
AT
