Noon

Nikki D, I got a good laugh at your latest pics and post!! But I agree, he made the most beautiful princess! He looks like he's thinking, " I'm gonna get you for this, mommy!" So cute!!!

AHHHHH!!! Now that I'm looking at Arlie's picture again, I NOW see the scale of the recliner in relation to him!!!!! I really can't handle the cuteness now! It's too much to bear!! He is the man! I love it!

Head's up! A bunch of ChynaKat pix to share! These are only a few of my favorites!

kayc, your picture made me laugh out loud because this is just too cute!! I love dogs in outfits, as you may have guessed! I can never get enough of these types of photos!!

Oh my goodness, Nikki D, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the latest note, but this part especially!!!!!! I thought that you would say the little chihuahua passed away as I neared the end but I am overjoyed that the little lady is still alive and well!!! And the picture you posted of her in her little tutu is beyond adorable!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhh!!! I love all of this!!!! We do have so much in common!

Nikki D I'm glad the prayer is helping you, too. I felt the need to write down my thoughts, as it really helps to express my feelings here. Talking about it openly makes the heaviness feel a little bit lighter, day by day. The first few days after Chyna passed away, I was adamant, I'd NEVER, EVER have another pet again because I can't ever imagine having to go through this hurt again, it's TOO MUCH to bear... but little by little, despite my reluctance to feel this way, the longing for a fur baby started to come back, much quicker than I expected. Growing up I ALWAYS ALWAYS loved dogs, but I couldn't have one while living at home with my parents because they felt I wasn't ready for the responsibility and also they are not really into animals (everyone is different).... so when I was able to move out on my own into my first apartment, that longing for a pet overwhelmed me and I finally got a dog of my very own. I was in Heaven with Chyna, she was so perfect for me! Even while Chyna was still here with me, I could never resist petting a stranger's dog and to this day, I can never pass up a chance to play with any dog I come in contact with. The urge is always overwhelming. If I ever came across a stray dog who wasn't afraid to come to me when I called, I'd take him in so he wouldn't be hit by a car later and in the hopes I'd be able to reunite him with his owner. I was actually able to reunite one dog with her owner after this poor dog had been missing for 3 whole weeks! The lady had been understandably distraught all that time without her baby and meanwhile had been praying that her dog would find it's way back home. It was purely by the grace of God that I found the missing dog's ad on Craigslist almost instantly! When the lady and her doggie reunited, the dog literally howled nonstop in joy and the lady was in tears...that was one of the BEST moments of my life to witness! I think that once you develop a deep love for animals, it never truly leaves you, even if you try to resist it. My mind kept telling me NO, NEVER AGAIN, it's too painful when they leave us but my heart has a mind of its own and so much love still available for an animal. I love all dogs, but I have always had a special love for shelter dogs and any dog I ever get must be adopted from one. I always have a desire to give them that chance to know what being utterly spoiled is like and I would take them ALL home if I could and would pamper each to no end. Animals have such an unconditional love for us and I think it's this pure love that makes me prefer them even more than people sometimes! lol! They are so sweet and just having YOU come home to them each day is the best parts of their EVERY day. I love caring for them. I have always said–and still say—that for me personally, a home doesn't feel like a HOME to me unless there's an animal living there. It doesn't feel natural to me to come home now to an empty house and not have to take my baby out for her evening walk. Contrary to what people may think, I don't really "enjoy" all this free time I now have after 12 years. Whenever I go to someone's animal-free house, it always seems like something is missing there, to me. I love my Chyna with all my heart and soul and I'm not trying to find another pet to take her place, but one day I'd like to welcome a new addition, almost in honor of her, as strange as it may sound. My love for animals didn't pass away along with her and I feel she'd want me to give another baby a chance to be spoiled like I spoiled her since she's no longer here and now, another dog can be allowed to have that chance, too. At the right time, whenever that may be (who knows?), I'll be ready again. I'll just need to lean heavily on God once again when their time comes to go back home, because I feel like I can't let the fear of losing someone cause me to be afraid to love fully and completely again. Some other animal out their needs that love, maybe even their life is depending on it.

My prayer for today: Dear Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus, we come to You today to thank You for waking us all up this morning. Thank You for that gift. Lord, give us peace with any decision You make even when it hurts us. Lord, thank You that when WE hurt, YOU hurt along with us. You don’t like to see any of Your children sad, but at the same time, You never promised us a life free of grief and sadness. But THANK YOU, Jesus, that even though we will all experience these feelings in our each of our lives at some point, You promised to always be there for us holding us tightly. You know about every tear we shed whether it’s in public or in private. When we soak our pillows with tears in the middle of the night, You see us and You will comfort us. Lord, we believe you WILL give us beauty for these ashes and thank You for the beautiful memories You left me with of Chyna. She was the most perfect, sweet dog and I thank You that you blessed my life with her. She was just what I needed in my life and though I miss her terribly, when You say it’s time to go back home, it’s time. You have reasons for Your decision and we have to trust You through our hurt and pain. Lord, help me rebuke these feelings of guilt that I have. If You wanted me to know what I needed to know to save Chyna, You had the power to open my eyes. However, You chose to blind my eyes to what I needed to do because it was Chyna’s time to go back to You. Lord, just give me, and US, comfort to know You don’t do what You do to cause us fear and hurt. Nothing can ever replace my sweet baby Chyna, but Lord I thank you that one day, my heart will be totally free to love another little baby again, while still keeping the good memories of her. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

Thank you so much, kayc! I loved taking pictures with my baby girl and that one is one of many! Thankfully, in a lot of the pictures, she had the biggest "smile"!

Nikki D, I just found your story and read it and wow, it is so similar to my post that you read about Chyna! I am in the exact same boat as you, as you know. Kura was so beautiful and the picture of him in his little birthday hat made me smile so brightly! Your "Anger, Guilt and Regrets" post was eerily similar to my own feelings of anger, guilt and regrets with how Chyna's situation was handled. Thank you so much for posting your story. It lets me know that I am not alone in how I am feeling and amazingly, this does give me comfort. When you are going through this type of pain, you do feel as if you're the only person who was ever felt this inner turmoil. We will all get through it somehow and I'm praying that each day is a little better than the last.

Thank you so much for your notes, Maylissa and kayc. I really appreciate your taking the time to respond to my post and your words truly offer me comfort.

Nikki D, my heart leapt when I looked at the pictures of your princess!!!! OMG, how cute is she???!!!!! I love love love the princess set up she has!!!! My heart is eager to love another new baby—when the time is right— just by seeing your pictures and I'll be sure to share good memories of her "big sister" Chyna. So cute! Thanks so much for sharing! I really needed that smile today!!

MartyT this is the most spot on part of the article in your last link: "The simple fact of the matter is that the worst loss is the loss that a person is experiencing now. Grief is the normal, human reaction to loss, and the greater the attachment to that which is lost, the stronger the grief one experiences in the wake of that loss. It is the price we pay for love. " I truly wish people would realize this. Thank you so much.

MartyT, thank you so much for your response. The links you posted truly are helping me and it gives me some comfort to know I'm not the only one struggling with this intense guilt. I pray that one day I can forgive myself. I am so glad that this forum is available as an outlet because many people in my life who I am closest to are not "animal people" so they don't understand that Chyna was more than just a pet to me. They don't understand how I can be taking her passing so hard especially knowing that she was "an older dog", and an older sick dog at that, and they are getting a little frustrated that I'm unable to go back to being myself 100% right now. To me, the passing of my sweet baby is the same as if I lost a human relationship due to death but these people have told me point blank that this is nowhere near the same thing and the death of a beloved pet vs. the death of a beloved human cannot be compared. My closest support system are from my best friend and one aunt who lives a few states away so I thank God for them. Thank God that this site exists. Nikki D, your reply brings tears to my eyes, too. I can't believe how similar our stories are! Hope is so hard to let go of when it comes to our babies. I just could NOT let go of my hope for her. I guess that's another reason why it's so hard right now, all my hope for her has to be gone because she is no longer here and her death is final. Chyna also hated to be away from me when it came to being at the vet and she absolutely hated being in a crate, too! She was never crated in my home. She was allowed to walk around freely at all times because she showed me long ago that she could be trusted. Chyna and I did this thing where we would wink at each other, winking with the same eye back and forth. It was like a little game we played and I always praised her when she would do it. lol! When she was in the oxygen crate during her final moments, she looked right at me through the glass as she was gasping for air and repeatedly blinked only her one eye at me to signal she wanted me to get her out! It destroyed my heart because I couldn't help her and couldn't remove her because the oxygen crate was the last ditch effort to try and help her breathe. I of course know how you feel and the pain is unbearable. I will pray for you and myself that we can somehow find our way past this and only focus on the good memories we have of our babies. I pray that God will allow us to one day forget all of the horrible memories of the scenes that led up to our babies' final moments. Thank you for saying she's cute! I actually heard this all the time from everyone and she was always a huge hit at the vet offices, both her regular vet and the emergency staff. She absolutely loved all the attention she received, the little ham.:-)

*This is a really long post but I just recently lost my dog after 12 years together, so please bear with me as I express my grief. I really need this outlet right now. Thank you for your understanding.* Hello, I lost my beautiful, sweet dog ChynaKat on March 24, 2016 and of course, my heart feels like it has been ripped out of my chest. I had her for almost 12 years and she was 14 when she died. I am a single woman and live alone so she and I were our own little family. She was a chihuahua, but wasn’t aggressive and rarely barked, unlike many dogs of this breed. She absolutely loved humans, but didn't care for other dogs. Lol! She was a princess indeed. Her clothing wardrobe was almost as big as mine and she was spoiled to no end! There was absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do for her! I adopted her on Petfinder.com as soon as I saw her little ad online and when I met her, I instantly knew it was a match made in Heaven. Several months ago, I noticed that she was starting to have accidents in the house way more than normal and I also noticed the urine had a strong foul odor. She didn’t have any blood in her urine (which was typical when she had a urinary tract infection), so I figured that because she was senior age now, she simply couldn’t hold her bladder as long as she used to. I just made sure to buy doggie diapers for her which helped when I couldn’t get to her in time. Other than that, she was her perfect, energetic, greedy little self! Not one pep was ever lost in her step during this time! Even when she had her regular vet check-ups, no bacteria was ever reported from her urine testing so I didn’t even think there was anything wrong. Well, several long months later after those accidents, she stopped eating her dog food for about 2 days though she drank her water and still gobbled down human food scraps when I offered them to her. I thought she was just being picky but when I noticed she was being lethargic, I brought her to the vet right away. Her blood was tested and it was discovered that she had a really bad kidney infection! I think that all those months prior of accidents was in fact a UTI but since it was untreated for so long, the infection spread to her kidneys!! I was so riddled with GUILT because how could I not have realized she had an infection all those months??!!! If I would have gotten her to the vet at the sight and smell of the first accident, she would have been quickly cured and back on her way! Anyway, her kidneys were badly infected so she had to go the emergency vet. She was in and out the hospital and on IV fluids for a few days and finally had a feeding tube inserted in because she wasn’t eating her new kidney based dog food diet and not drinking enough water. (She still wanted human food though, go figure.) About two weeks with the feeding tube, she made a dramatic improvement, almost at 95%!!! She was even eating her dog food on her own and loved it! (The animals are still able to eat and drink on their own with the tube in). Her blood was tested several times and each time the results were near perfect! Since she was doing so well, the vet and I begin the process of weaning her off the tube, which required reducing her water intake through the tube. If she didn’t react well to the decrease, we’d keep the tube in. That was the absolute worse decision. She stopped eating her dog food again within 3 days and even vomited one morning, and I have no idea why I didn’t take her to the vet right away! I called the vets on the phone and told them everything that happened as I was on the way out of town with Chyna, and they told me not to worry. They said she was probably a little dehydrated from the decreased water from her feeding tube which was part of the weaning off tube process. They also said that I was giving her her morning meds too early without allowing food to be in her belly first which was probably why she vomited. So I went back to her tube feedings while I was out of town with her because they told me there was no cause for alarm. One of the vet techs also told me to give her an increased amount of water to help her get rehydrated! WHY did I listen to that???!!!! I figure they were the experts so they couldn’t steer me wrong and I trusted them! Looking back, I believe the increased water caused my dog to die from water intoxication!!! In the end, she died because the excess fluid from all the extra water I was incorrectly told to give her went to her lungs and caused her to become unable to breathe!!! They were unable to properly treat her dehydration ALONG WITH the removal of the excess water in her lungs at the same time so Chyna died a painful death, gasping for air. I am so riddled with guilt because when I was at the ER with her they kept asking if I wanted to euthanize her since she wasn’t going to make it but I could not bring myself to say “yes” though I saw she was suffering! I just felt that as long as her heart was beating, there was a chance a miracle could happen and she could be saved. A miracle had just happened a week ago when she was healed when we all thought she wasn’t going to make it, so I kept praying for another one despite how it all looked. What if I euthanized her and she could have been saved??? I kept wrestling back and forth with the idea at the office! So before I could make the decision, I was able to see her again and as soon as I entered the room, her heart stopped beating! It was the worst day of my life to see my Chyna’s lifeless body, eyes wide open and tongue limply hanging out. She truly fought to the very end! The guilt I feel is far greater than my sadness: Why didn’t I bring her to vet at the first urine accident several months ago? Why did I even ask to begin the process of weaning her off her feeding tube when everything had been going so well and she was almost healed? Why didn’t I bring her back to the vet as soon as she vomited? Why did I listen to the vet tech and give Chyna all that extra water? WHY didn’t I allow her to be euthanized so she could have had a peaceful death instead of dying gasping for breath? My God, I am having trouble living with myself! I feel like I totally failed her during her last years of life! I truly believe she could have lived a few more years if it not been for so many human errors. I’m praying to God for peace!