I Just Can't Be In Peace After The Death Of My French Poodle. I Mi

[vicente07]

Hello,

My name is Vicente and last Monday was one month since my beautiful little dog died and I have been feeling terrible.The last two weeks have been very hard since just when I thought I was starting to heal, I had a relapse and I have been feeling sad again since last Sunday.

This is what I wrote a few days after he died so that you can get an idea of my situation and how important my little dog was for me. He was my life:

My name is Vicente Ernesto Sánchez and I am writing from Mexico because my beautiful seven year old French Poodle died last Friday, Juanuary 9 and I feel terrible and guilty.

I really need help since I don't know how I am going to get over this situation.

I try to rescue stray dogs to then find them a happy home and I have tried to find a home for a Golden Retriever for 6 months. He has been in a pet care for months and every two days I went with my French Poodle to pick him up and take them for a walk.

That Friday, I was outside a Vet with my little French Poodle, The Golden and a little Cocker my brother rescued. Everything was ok and I have them with their own leash. Suddenly, my little dog growled at the Golden and jump over him to attack him. The golden just put his body above my dog and I separated them almost immediately. The problem is that my dog fell unconscious with his tongue outside the muzzle. The Vet tried to save him, gave him a shot, reanimated him and nothing. He died.

I feel terrible. Guyton was my best friend, my partner and my life. I feel I could have prevented this from happening and this makes me feel guilty and misserable.

My little dog was 7 years old and had lung and heart failure that made him snore, have breathing attacks and get tired easily after running. I don't know if it was a combination of all these problems and if he wasn't going to be able to live for many more years and these problems caused his heart attack. One of his ex Vets told me today that due to his health condition, his life expectancy wasn't very optimistic and that dogs like him life 40 percent less than healthy dogs. In spite of this, I just can't rest and I feel that I took 10 years of his life away from him and that I also took y dad's dog away from him since Guyton was very important to him too and he is very sad. Seeing him like this makes me feel very bad and worsens everything.

I feel terrible and I can't belive how everything seemed to have aligned to cause this tragedy. The owner of the Pet care couldn't take the Cocker to get vaccinated and this ius why I took her with us that day. Then, I was about to leave the Vet's office to walk the dogs while the doctor finished bathing a cat, when I decided to come back to grab a t-shirt that I have put on The Golden Retriever for months that says Adopt me because I thought Who knows Maybe a possible adoptant shows up during this little walk. And when I came back this tragedy took place. It's unbelievable and I feel terrible and guilty.

I really need some advice and support because this dog was the best thing in my life. I have OCD and my life has been horrible for years and this little dog gave me moments of great happyness. My mental condition makes this tragedy tougher and I don't know what to do. This was just the last straw to complete my misserable life. I wasted my twenties since I stopped going to school regularly at the age of 19 to avoid seeing my friends and having anxiety problems. I got this idea that I couldn't talk about anything and I made it happen, which made my life misserable in the University, which I hated by the way, and in social events. I finished a law degree going to school only on Saturdays, but I didn't like this degree either and I have practically been outside a normal twenty something guy's social life all these years.

I had many dreams. I wanted to go to Canada or to a great US city like New York and have a new life with a nice job, friends, a nice appartment and a healthy state of mind. I was very interested in having a life like the one that you could see on Friends, Seinfeld and other 90s sitcoms and movies. It is my favorite decade and I idealise this decade.

I spent years regretting I couldn't turn back time to the 90s and not having been born many years earlier to live my 20's in this decade. I always thought I was going to be able to fulfill this dream. I was too trusting and put my plans off several times thinking: I am just 25, I still have a few years before turning 30. The day will come. But my personal and family problems, my disease and indecision made these dreams fade away.

My routine these years has been waking up, taking a shower, having breakfast, watching tv, eating, watching tv again, surfing the net, having dinner and going to bed. My little dog changed it a little bit because I took him for a walk every day, but it has been pretty much the same ever since I was 19. I am about to turn 30 and I have no friends, no job, no life. Never had a girlfriend. I have never been able to flirt and have a relationship. It's hard for me to talk to girls and they just seem to find me unattractive, boring and disgusting. I feel they find being next to me or touch me gross and unpleasant. My dog was the creature that cared the most about me and loved me with all my problems unconditionally. He was my best and only friend. He was my life and the one that brightened my life.

I feel lonely and I am alone despite I live with my brother and my mom. I just miss walking him, seeing him on my bed, knowing he is behind my bathroom door waiting for me to get out and take him for a walk, seeing how happy he got when he saw his necklace, hear his little bell and saw his leash. I miss him in my car because he went almost everywhere with me. He was my best friend and my life partner. And the fact of knowing these things won't happen anymore and that the life plans I had with him are death is horrible. He was going to be my only companion and now I don't know what is going to happen with my life.

I go over the tragical event over and over again and it's overwhelming and makes me feel misserable many times.

This dog was extremely special for me me because my parents separated last May and the previous years there were many fights in my house and this little dog gave us great moments of joy, hope and he even brought the family together and even delayed my parents' separation. My little Guyton reached this level of importance and power. The situation became unbearable and my parents finally split up. I was very worried for him because he was extremely attached to my dad and the fact of seeing him waiting for my dad to get home on the stairs looking at the living room window and knowing my dad was no longer come back home made me feel terrible. The first days were very tough, but fortunately my dad and I managed a way to make Guyton spend time with him and we developed a routine centered around him. Every day My dad and I met between 7 and 9pm whether in a department store, a cafe or my uncle's house to give Guyton to him so that he could spend time with my dad and continue sleeping with him just how he used to do it when my dad still lived with us, and then, my dad gave Guyton back to me in the morning and he spent the whole day with me. This is also something that I am having trouble realizing it's not part of my routine anymore and makes this tragedy harder to deal with. Everyday I got back home with Guyton in the morning and he jumped to my bed and usually kissed me. Then, I took a swower and he either waited for me outside the bathroom or on my bed. We had several customs like these and it's terrible to know this doesn't happen anymore and have to readjust my life. I took him for a walk in the morning and in the afternoon every day. He waited for me on my bed or outside my bathroom with a lot of excitement for knowing it was his walk time. Sometimes he followed me with his eyes or everywhere to let me know he wanted to go out and he was looking forward to it. He got very happy. He cried, yelled, kissed me, sneezed and jumped over me when I showed him his necklace, he heard the little bell I put on it and when he saw his leash.

I don't know what I am going to do. I hate today's world. I find it so gray, lame, superficiel, plastic, so full of technological devices I don't like and make it even more shallow and with less personality and attractive. I hate today's era. I don't fit in and I am not looking forward to the next years. Music sucks, movies suck, new generations make me feel hopeless and it's just horrible. Going abroad is no longer interesting and attractive to me because I lost the best years when I should have done it, which were between 2004 and 2012 when I was younger and still had dreams and a lot of nostalgia for the 90s. which was a great impulse to live in The US, Canada or The UK. These ambitions are gone. I don't feel like studying a Masters, looking for a great job or discovering new things anymore. I wasted my 20s in a terrible depressing way. The years that for most people are the best in life. The years where you go to college, have great experiences, have fun, relationships, when you explore and discover things, when you grow up, start working as a young adult. The years where many people live life at its fullest, go out, find their independence, their path and the girl of their dreams. I didn't have any of these things and you have no idea how sad, depressing and impotent it is to realize you will never be able to turn back time and that these years are gone for good. Now I am under medication, fluvoxamine, which makes these feelings be like asleep. It's like being sedated. I still feel them and I still know they are deep inside of me, but I am druggy enough to forget a little bit about them, something I am not comfortable with because the medicine is not curing me and will never do it, it just confuses you a little bit and you don't feel good, complete and satisfied. When I stop taking them, I usually start getting my nostalgia and regrets back fast, something that belive it or not, makes me feel good and alive. The problem is that the crisis become harder to manage. For example, I haven't taken this medicine the last days and I don't know if this was the reason why my dog's loss became even more painful this weekend. this morning I really wanted to die. I was desperate. I wanted to disconnect myself to avoid the great pain I felt.

Sometimes I feel like giving up and killing myself to go with my little dog. Sometimes I feel it's unbelievable and ridiculous that I haven't committed suicide after all the years of pain, sorrow, loneliness, deceptions, problems, mental suffering and sadness. What am I going to do? If only I could know what he is thinking, where he is and get guided by him. The death of my beautiful little Guyton was the last straw to make me go to pieces and the last element to complete a decade of horrible 20s.

Guyton is buried in my garden, but it is still too painful to look at his grave and stay there for a long time. It's just unbelievable. Many things just lined up for this tragedy to happen. I really don't know if this was meant to happen since there was a series of factors that make me think this. First, the rescued Golden Retriever Guyton had the little fight with, had many chances to be adopted, but in the end, the adoptions didn't take place. Sometimes because the adoprtants werent good and other times because of situations that make me feel what I just mentioned. He was about to be adopted by a family with three little girls and a boy. They went to meet him at the Pet care and they liked him. The owner of the ppet care gave me a call to tell me the family was ready to take hi with them and put the mom on the phone. I asked her to give me one more day. I told her this because I had another possible adoptant I had talked with on the phone that sounded like the perfect adoptant for him. She was the mother of a girl and a boy. He was married and thay had just moved to my city. She told me she loved dogs and that the Golden, whose name is Güero by the way, was going to sleep with her and be very spoiled. I liked this idea and the next day and took El Güero to their house so that he spent the night with the family to see if there was chemistry. The next day, I picked him up and the mom told me that her daughter's allergies had worsened that night and that the dog had growled at her boy. She wasn't upset about that, but I am sure that this was something that mae her decide not to keep the dog and the girl's nose was very red and swalllowed, so I could witness she wasn't lying. anyway, I thought: No problem, I still had the other family, so I gave the mom a call. She answeres me and tells me they had already got a puppy. I felt terrible, although there was something about the family that didn't make me feel convinced about giving el Güero to them. They had a big garden, something I liked, but the girls were very annoying and brusque and I always had the feeling that even though the mom ensured me the dog could have access to the house, he was going to end up the whole day in the Garden kind of lonely.

More weeks went by and I was worried because el Güero just couldn't gain weight. He is very slender and this was a reason why I hadn't got him neutered. Besides, I just felt bad about the idea of doing this to him. I tend to do that. The problem was that he had become a little bit more aggresive. He was very sweet when I rescued him, but there were two little dogs in the first Pet care where he stayed that bothered him a lot and I think this made his character change. As time went by, he became more intolerant towards other dogs and he got into several fights in the Pet care where he is now and where he has been for several months. In spite of this, I didn't get him neutered to see if his behavior improved because he was thin and because of my idea of not wanting to heart him.

Then, at the beginning of the year I got a new possible adoptant. A divorced mother with two girls. I went to her house to have a little interview because it is something I like to do before giving a dog in adoption and she told me she was going to go meet el Güero with her girls the following day. I told her it was ok and that I was going to be there around 1:30. She went to meet el Güero with the girls and according to the owner of the pet care and his employee. everything started great. They played with him and the dog was being nice and loving. Suddenly, the owner and the employee heard a fuss and yelling. They went out and the mom took the youngest girl away from el Güero because he put his muzzle on the girl's forehead and jammed her two of his

fangs. The mother took the episode well according to the owner and left the place. I arrived around 10 minutes after this happened because I arrived a little bit later than we had agreed. The owner and the employee told me the family was just waiting for me to take the dog with them and suddenly this event took place and made the mom changed her mind. I felt bad again and I couldn't believe how close El Güero had been again from being adopted. This reinforced my idea that there was something weird around this.

That week my brother rescued a female Cocker and took her to this Pet care. The owwner offered me on Monday to take her to the Vet to get her vaccinated, but when I arrived on Friday, the employee told me he hadn't had a chance to do it. I went three times a week with Guyton to visit el Güero and took them together for a walk always. That day, I decided to take the Cocker to in order to get her vaccinated. We arrived to the Vet and the doctor was busy bathing a cat. He told me to get back in 20 minutes. I had taken the cocker and Guyton out of the car and left El Güero inside. I noticed he was desperate for getting out of the car so I left him get out. I had the three dogs with their leash inside the Vet's store and I was on my way to a garden in front of the store to walk the dogs when I decided to get back to my car to get a t-shirt that I pu on El Güero that says: "Adopt me". I thought: I could get a possible adoptant during this little walk. Who knows. I tried to put the shirt on el Güero, but the dogs were excited, specially Guyton because he was trying to mount the cocker. I tried to put Guyton's leash under a dog's house to keep him there and it didn't work. I had the three dogs with their leash again inside the Vet's store when suddenly Guyton growls at the Golden and gets into this little fight. I separated them in a matter of 2 seconds and Guyton fell death to a heart attack. The Vet tried to save him, but he couldn't do anything. This is what is making my grieving process more difficult, painful and unbearable. The guilt and the fact that I could have put one of the dogs back in the car, left El Güero inside or tried to leash them to another thing, like a post. The guilt has been killing me and I find the whole situation even ridiculous. See all the things that happened that ended in this horrible tragedy. It's just unbelievable and it has been the story of my life in the last years. In the end, I usually end up screwed for ridiculous, unbelievable or stupid factors. I feel I killed him in certain way and that I took several years of his life away from him. And the series of events that took place before his death made me feel bad, weird, sad, guilty, stupid and pensive about something beyond my control that made this tragedy ocurred. What do you think?

I have been feeling very sad again lately. I thought I had found a way out of the most difficult period, but I just had a relapsed. I don't know if it has something to do with the fact I stopped taking my medicine for my mental condition for several days, if it's just something that was triggered by some memory or a moment of weakness I had or a combination of everything. I don't know what to do. I know that taking my medicine, fluvoxamine, helps me hide my sadness and makes me feel less sad, but I also know that antidepressants tend to fool your brain, hyde your emotions and mask your real feelings and state of mind, which is something I have never been very comfortable with.

I hope you can reply to me and thank you very much in advance for your help.

[enna]

I have read your post, Vicente, and my heart hurts for you as you are missing your precious French Poodle, Guyton.

I hope you seek out someone who is knowledgeable in loss of a pet. You need to have your pain validated and a good pet grief counselor will help you. The feelings you are having are normal. Those of us who have lost a pet understand the pain.

Bless you for the deep love you have for animals.

Anne

[kayc]

I recall reading here but it was a long while ago, A grief counselor would be a good step in helping you deal with your grief, as well as expressing yourself, which you've already done here. Wishing you peace from your pain.

[littlebee]

I'm sorry for your loss vicente

I wish for you to find peace and relief to your pain, I know it is hard, because we loved our companion animals so much, they became part of our souls.

for me at first was comforting to see my chiquiniñas pictures, but now since just a few days ago I can't see them because it relieves the pain. Why now that is having a different effect on me? I don't know.

Love yourself and forgive yourself, because that is what Guyton want for you, because he love you too.

Have you made a memorial or something to honor Guyton ? maybe that can help you to begin healing.

[vicente07]

I'm sorry for your loss vicente

I wish for you to find peace and relief to your pain, I know it is hard, because we loved our companion animals so much, they became part of our souls.

for me at first was comforting to see my chiquiniñas pictures, but now since just a few days ago I can't see them because it relieves the pain. Why now that is having a different effect on me? I don't know.

Love yourself and forgive yourself, because that is what Guyton want for you, because he love you too.

Have you made a memorial or something to honor Guyton ? maybe that can help you to begin healing.

Good evening,

Thank you very much for your reply. I just saw it because I didn't know I had got a reply. He is buried in my garden and I see him every day. The problem is that I have been feeling very bad again lately. I can't get over this lost.

[kayc]

It's not uncommon to feel a setback, sometimes it takes a while for reality to set in and when it does, it's hard. I'm sorry you're feeling bad again. Did you ever see a grief counselor?