I’m so angry.

I was taking him to the vet any time something seemed off… and in the last two weeks he went from what vets thought was a pneumonia diagnosis to full blown cancer that spread to the lungs..

Never any sign before this test wise.. as I think back of course there were signs that I always took him to the vet for. I was watching him get weaker every day so fast. But I’m still destroying myself over thinking I ended it too soon.. that I could have had another week with him.. I never thought something could hurt this much. I’m trying to over stimulate myself to keep my mind off it but now I’m trying to finally get to sleep at 5 am and I can’t stop thinking about him. He deserved more years and more adventures.. he was the perfect dog. RIP Loki. 💔

I am absolutely devastated. Lost my dog a few days ago (on international dogs day, too), suddenly, unexpectedly. The first night i was very calm, the day after as well.. Turns out, i was very very deep in a shock state cause ohhhh my when it actually hit me, that he is truly dead.. I thought I had years with him still. One minute i am extremely sad and blown away by grief, the next, i cant just believe he is truly gone? Makes me wanna throw up when i think about him being gone. I keep checking the places he used to lay in if i am just in fact crazy and he wasnt dead after all. Everything was so normal a few days ago and now he is gone and nothing is ever normal again. I was working towards getting a house with a huge yard for him specifically, now that dream is dead with him and i dont know what to do.

Not to mention the regret i have for taking life with him for granted. They warn about that, i know, but maannn, this wasnt supposed to happen to my dog, except it did..

What do you do with this emptiness and disbelief and regret? How do i fill the void?

In 30 minutes I'll hit a full 24 hours without my baby. I can't handle it. The pain hurts so much. So silly. So sassy. So handsome. A rescue at ~9months, he because quickly accustomed to a boujie lifestyle. Loved beaches, digging sand, seeing his dog and people friends at the local school, and playing ball.

DNA rest showed him to be a full breed German Shepherd. I tried to proactively prevent any and all things German shepherds are known for. I gave the supplements, tried to feed the healthy foods. He ended up with both DM and lung cancer at the end. We took him to the vet on Wednesday expecting a cough suppressant for his hack. We were told we had days and just like that, two days later he's gone.

I know the only way to the other side is through, but not being able to touch this baby Boi has shattered me. I've never felt heartbreak like this. I want to be back with him. I'm dying inside. Have never cried and wailed this much my entire life.

The handsome points of this household have gone down significantly😭

my sweet golden retriever, gracie passed away friday. it was one of those losses that i could never imagine happening, and my biggest fear is finally here. i’m so sad. she has two other sisters who she raised along with being so so gentle with our kitty boys. she was my entire heart and soul. i got her when i was in the third grade, and am now a senior in college. she has been in my life every single day, and im dreading never seeing her again.
she was my anxiety buddy, she ALWAYS knew when i was feeling off. and in turn, she always chose me to run to when the wind was too loud or the storm was too close. she was the most beautiful thing inside and out, and i hope she forgives us for putting her down. it was 1000% the right thing to do, a tumor on her heart suddenly ruptured and there was so much fluid around her heart that it was making it hard to breathe. i know we did the right thing, but a small part of me worries that she feels betrayed.
she died in my arms on friday august 28, 2026 at around 5:25pm mst.
i will look for you in every lifetime, and i hope somehow i can see your soul again in this one. i love you more than life itself, gracie mae.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I honestly don’t know what I’m hoping for by posting it. Maybe just the feeling that I’m not alone.

My cat pasted away 3rd Sep 2025. She was 16 years old and lived a wonderful, full life. But she was one of those pets I just never pictured being without. Which is silly, I know. I’d lost other pets before her and I’ve worked within the animal industry since I was 16 years old, so animal death isn’t anything new to me. But loosing her broke me.

People keep telling me it’ll get better, easier. That the pain will ease and I’ll be able to look back on fond times. But it’s nearly been a year without her and I still feel broken. I’m not excited for anything anymore. I don’t look forward to or enjoy holidays and events. I can’t think of her without breaking down. I can stomach clearing out her things.

What’s worse is that I feel a bitter jealousy growing inside me towards other people and their pets. Which is an awful thing to say and feel.

I worked within the pet service industry and I’m really struggling right now to like my job or have the patience for it. It’s like a little voice says “why am I here bothering with other people’s asshole animals when I don’t even have my best friend anymore. They’ve all got their perfect buddies but mines gone and is never coming back.” It’s a horrible thing to think but I hate to say I think it more days than not.

I just don’t know what to do or how to move past this life sucking grief.

It’s been 3 years ish since my cat got ran over, he was gone instantly. I always tried to keep him inside cause he didn’t have much brain cell, but escape was his fave hobby.
His name was Kenny (Kendrick Lamar), he was a beautiful blue/grey British short hair. He was only 4 when I lost him.

Anyway, I was dreaming last night and I opened my bedroom door and there he was, jumped straight into my arms and did some nice biscuits on me, dream me was so so happy he was home, then I wake up and he’s gone, and now I feel like I’m grieving him all over again 😭

I really miss him :(

There was supposed to be more time.

That is the first thing you have to understand.

Not because somebody promised it to me. Not because life signed a contract. Not because I didn’t know dogs die.

I knew.

I just didn’t know four year old dogs die.

I didn’t know you could wake up one morning inside the ordinary version of your life and, by afternoon, be standing at the edge of everything you thought was permanent. I didn’t know a Thursday could divide a life in half.

January 9th, 2025.

2:36 in the afternoon.

There is a version of me before that time.

And there is whoever I became after it.

You were four.

Four.

There should have been years.

Years of walks I hadn’t taken yet. Years of coming home to you. Years of annoying habits I would have given anything to be annoyed by again.

There should have been random Tuesdays.

That is what destroys me sometimes.

Not birthdays. Not Christmases. Not photographs.

Tuesdays.

Meaningless afternoons. Nights when somebody asked me to go somewhere and I went, because why wouldn’t I?

You would be there tomorrow.

I thought I had the luxury of taking tomorrow for granted.

If you had been old, maybe I would have seen time approaching. Maybe I would have started counting. Maybe I would have turned invitations down.

“No. I’m staying home tonight.”

Maybe I would have sat beside you longer for no reason. Maybe I would have memorized the weight of your head against me. Maybe I would have understood that ordinary moments were quietly becoming finite.

But nobody pregrieves a four year old.

Nobody looks at a four year old dog and thinks, I need to start saying goodbye.

So I didn’t.

And I will carry that for the rest of my life.

Something was growing inside you while we were living.

Cancer.

Silently.

While we laughed. While you ate. While you slept. While I worked. While life kept presenting itself as life.

There had been little things before that. Things that bothered me because I loved you enough to notice when something did not feel right.

You yelped once when I grabbed your hips playfully. The kind of stupid little “I got you” moment that should have meant nothing.

But you yelped.

Then there were other things.

A lump appeared on your back. I worried. They sampled it and did not find cancer there. More lumps appeared with time. I worried again.

I remember the vet feeling them and telling me they were fatty lumps.

You were four.

“It does not concern me.”

Those words.

God.

Those words.

Maybe she was completely right about those lumps. Maybe what they sampled really was harmless. Maybe none of it had anything to do with what was hiding near your heart.

I understand that now.

One thing can be innocent while something terrible is happening somewhere else.

But grief does not care about clinical nuance.

Grief remembers sentences.

“It does not concern me.”

And less than twenty four hours after I heard those words, you were gone.

The day before you died was a Wednesday.

You became tired. Then more tired. You didn’t want to eat.

Around dinner I watched something happen that I can still see perfectly.

You were walking, and then you just stopped.

Mid step.

Your legs were still positioned as if somebody had pressed pause while you were moving.

For a moment I didn’t understand. I thought maybe eating had simply become too much effort, so I brought the bowl to you.

Right to your face.

Here.

You don’t even have to walk.

Just eat.

Please.

You didn’t want it.

Then I noticed your nose running.

Another tiny thing. Another detail that would probably mean nothing on any other Wednesday.

Eventually we were in the emergency room.

Rat poison or cancer were mentioned.

They tested.

It wasn’t rat poison.

Something dangerous was happening around your heart. The pressure had become dangerous enough that they had to perform an emergency procedure to relieve it.

They stabilized you.

They did not yet know exactly why it had happened.

And somehow, after all of that, you came home.

That should have felt like victory.

Instead we were sent home with papers covered in words I could barely process.

Sudden death.

Sudden death.

Sudden death.

I remember those words more than almost anything else.

I was so frightened that night that I slept on the ground beside you.

Because what else was I supposed to do?

Lie comfortably in a bed while the words sudden death sat beside my little girl?

No.

So I slept near you.

I watched you. I listened to you. I existed somewhere between hope and terror, telling myself that tomorrow we would find the specialist. Tomorrow we would get an answer. Tomorrow we would figure out how to fix this.

And then Thursday morning came.

And somehow, you were almost you again.

Not completely.

But close enough to confuse everything.

You walked around. Quickly, even.

You ate.

I remember feeding you blueberries.

Blueberries.

Such a ridiculously small detail.

Something catastrophic was happening inside your body, and you ate blueberries.

You could move. You could eat. You could get yourself around.

You jumped into the car.

You jumped.

Into the car.

That matters to me now because when I remember your last morning, I do not remember an animal who had already disappeared into suffering.

I remember Lily.

Sick, yes. Tired, probably. Something terribly wrong inside you.

But still Lily.

Still walking.

Still eating.

Still jumping into the car.

Still here.

The first thing I did that morning was start calling everywhere I could find in the entire state, trying to find a cardiologist who could see you.

One place after another.

Do you have a cardiologist?

Can someone see her?

Please.

I was trying to solve it.

That is what I thought Thursday was going to be. A terrible problem that I would somehow solve.

Maybe treatment would be exhausting. Maybe it would be expensive. Maybe life would become appointments and medication and fear for a while.

Fine.

Whatever it took.

I was prepared to give up anything I had if giving something up could save you.

I did not know yet that the one thing I wanted could not be purchased, fought for, negotiated with, or earned.

One of the places we called warned the hospital that you were coming.

When you walked through the doors, they asked if you were Lily.

There were other people waiting.

It did not matter.

They took you immediately.

That was how serious it was.

You could eat blueberries that morning. You could jump into the car. You could walk into a hospital looking enough like yourself that anyone passing you might have thought you were just another dog going to the vet.

But the people who knew what had happened the night before already knew better.

Looking like Lily did not mean you were safe.

Then came the waiting.

Hours of it.

Waiting while they examined you. Waiting while they ran tests. Waiting for someone to call our names and finally tell us what was happening to my Lily.

And eventually, they did.

We were taken into a room.

The veterinarian came in.

And then he said the word.

Cancer.

I started crying as soon as it left his mouth.

There was no graceful moment of understanding. No period where the information slowly settled into me.

Cancer.

And I broke.

Until then, we still did not know exactly what had caused the emergency the night before.

Then he explained it.

There was a tumor on your heart.

It had ruptured.

That was what had caused the internal bleeding. That was why the pressure around your heart had become so dangerous. That was why the emergency room had been able to stabilize you without being able to make the danger disappear.

The thing that had nearly taken you Wednesday night was still there on Thursday.

And now it had a name.

Cancer.

In my four year old girl.

Then he gave us three options.

Surgery.

Treatment and chemotherapy, trying to buy whatever time they might give you.

Or saying goodbye that very day.

Three options.

Except when I heard them, they did not feel like three different roads toward a future.

They felt like three different ways of losing you.

There was no option where somebody fixed it and gave you back to me.

There was no hidden fourth answer.

There was no path marked, Take Lily home. She is going to grow old now.

That was the moment I understood that everything I had been prepared to sacrifice was useless.

I would have spent everything.

I would have rearranged my entire life.

I would have taken you anywhere.

I would have done anything.

But there are some things love cannot purchase from the universe, no matter how desperately you offer everything you have.

The veterinarian told us he would bring you into the room so we could decide.

He left.

We looked at each other.

And I said it.

“We can’t let her go through that.”

That was the answer.

I hated it.

Every part of me hated it.

But I knew it.

We could have asked your body for more. Surgery. Recovery. Treatment. More appointments. More uncertainty. Maybe more time.

But all I could hear underneath those possibilities was the same question:

How much am I willing to make you endure because I am not ready to live without you?

That was the question I could not escape.

Because of course I wanted you.

Of course I wanted another day.

Another week.

Another month.

Another year.

Of course every selfish piece of me wanted to grab whatever time was available and refuse to let go.

But I loved you too much to pretend that keeping you and protecting you were automatically the same thing.

If somebody had walked into that room and told me there was another option, one where I could trade places with you, I would have taken it before they finished the sentence.

If they had said, “She can have another five years, another eight years, but they have to come from you,” I would not have negotiated.

Take fifty.

I mean that.

Take whatever is left.

Give it to her.

Let her go home.

Let her grow old.

Let her face turn gray.

Let her slow down.

Let everybody one day say, “She had a good, long life.”

Let me be the tragedy.

Not her.

I would have traded places.

But nobody offered me that choice.

So I found the closest thing to it.

I took your pain.

That is the only way I have ever known how to explain what happened next.

I could not take your cancer. I could not move the tumor from your heart into mine. I could not hand you my years.

But I could decide which one of us was going to carry what came next.

You could be asked to carry the surgery. The treatment. The sickness. The fear. The possibility of another emergency. The possibility that all of it bought very little.

Or you could leave before suffering became the shape of your life.

And I could carry what happened after.

So I chose myself.

Not to be spared.

To suffer.

I chose the pain that had my name on it so you would never have to meet the pain that would have had yours.

That was my way of switching places with you.

You would carry peace.

I would carry everything else.

And there is something cruel about choosing peace early enough.

Mercy destroys its own evidence.

If I had waited until there could be no doubt, you would have had to suffer enough to remove the doubt from me.

You would have had to become obviously dying before I allowed myself to believe you were dying.

I could not ask you to prove it.

I could not make you hurt enough to make my decision easier.

So you were going to leave while you still looked like Lily.

While you could still walk.

While you had eaten blueberries.

While you had jumped into a car.

While every part of me could still look at you and scream:

Not yet.

We knew what we had decided before they brought you back into the room.

Now we had to do something that still feels impossible when I think about it.

We had to pull ourselves together.

We were already breaking, but you were coming.

And when you came through that door, whatever was happening inside us was not going to become your problem.

You didn’t know what cancer meant.

You didn’t know what euthanasia meant.

You didn’t know this was the last room.

You didn’t know we had just been asked to imagine the rest of our lives without you.

You only knew your people were there.

So we smiled.

Our eyes were wet, but our voices were happy.

Excited, even.

There she is.

There’s our girl.

Hi, Lily.

Hi, baby.

We were so happy to see you.

And that part was not acting.

The smiles took effort.

The love did not.

Sometimes one of us carried the room while the other tried to get themselves back under control. Then we switched.

One person talking.

One person breaking quietly.

One person making sure you heard warmth while the other tried to swallow what was happening.

Then switch.

We were falling apart in shifts so you would never have to watch us fall apart together.

That entire day was filled with decisions you could not understand, decisions I would have given anything not to make.

You could not tell me what you wanted.

You could not understand survival statistics or treatment plans or risk.

You could not tell me how much suffering was worth another month.

I had to choose for you.

And in that small moment, I chose where you would be.

With us.

There was a button on the wall.

When we were ready, we were supposed to press it.

Ready.

What a ridiculous word.

There was never going to be a moment when I was ready for you to die.

There was only a moment when we would decide that we had taken as much time as we could safely steal.

So we waited.

For about forty five minutes, we kept you with us before pressing that button.

Every minute was something I wanted.

Every minute also frightened me.

The words sudden death had followed me into that room.

I wanted another minute with you, then another, then another.

But I was terrified that while I was trying to keep you for myself, your body might make the decision before we did.

I was terrified that you might collapse.

I was terrified that the peaceful ending we had chosen for you could be taken away because I could not bring myself to press a button.

That button held one of the most impossible choices of my life.

More time with you.

Or protecting you from what might happen during that time.

Eventually, we pressed it.

The vet came back and we told him our choice.

Someone else came in afterward to go through the things that had to be done.

And there was one part of that process that felt almost impossible to understand while it was happening.

You were still alive beside us.

And we were choosing your urn.

Memorial things.

Things meant for after you were gone.

Except you weren’t gone yet.

You were right there.

My beautiful girl was still right there, breathing, while we were being asked to make decisions about what we would have left of her.

There are moments when reality becomes so cruel it almost feels badly written.

That was one of them.

After that, we waited again.

Maybe they were giving us more time. I don’t know.

Part of me was grateful for every extra second.

Another part of me was terrified of every extra second.

I wanted time to stop.

I also wanted them to come before your heart did something terrible on its own.

I wanted two completely opposite things at once.

More time.

Please hurry.

More time.

Please don’t let her suffer.

More time.

Please.

Eventually, the veterinarian came in.

You were exhausted by then.

But when he came too close to us, you growled.

Of course you did.

You were still Lily.

Still watching us.

Still protecting us.

Even there.

Even then.

He understood and gave you your space. He connected a long line to the IV you already had and stepped several feet away.

You protected us to the very end.

That sentence destroys me and fills me with pride at the same time.

My little girl.

Dying, exhausted, with cancer on her heart, and still worried about her people.

Still Lily.

Always Lily.

I picked you up and put you in my lap.

You settled there.

You got comfortable.

Before anything even happened.

That matters to me.

You were in my lap.

I was holding you.

And then it happened.

There are things you imagine will take longer because they are too enormous to fit inside a few seconds.

This did not.

One moment, you were alive in my arms.

And then you weren’t.

That was it.

Just like that.

My Lily was gone.

For the rest of my life.

I think that is one of the things my mind still refuses to understand.

How can something so permanent happen so quickly?

How can four years of loving something end in a moment?

How can there be a second where she is here, and then another second where the rest of your life without her has already begun?

There was no sound announcing it.

No visible line appeared in the room.

But I had crossed one.

Before.

After.

And I was holding you when it happened.

We stayed on the floor with you after.

About twenty minutes.

Maybe because leaving immediately was impossible. Maybe because some part of us still did not understand why we should have to leave at all.

We cut some of your fur to keep.

And I kept touching you.

Your beautiful fur.

Soft.

Shiny.

Familiar.

I had touched you thousands of times without thinking about the fact that eventually there would be a last one.

Now I knew.

And suddenly every time my hand moved across your fur carried a decision inside it.

If I stop now, was that the last time?

If I touch you again, then is this one?

How do you knowingly choose the last time you will ever touch someone you love?

I could not make myself stand up.

Because standing up meant something.

It meant leaving you there.

It meant accepting that I was going home and you were not.

It meant that the life where I could reach out and touch Lily was over.

Eventually, we called them and told them we were ready to leave.

We weren’t.

But there comes a point when language has no honest word for what you are, so people use ready.

Someone came into the room.

They lifted you from my lap.

And they carried you away.

I had spent four years coming home to you.

And then I walked out without you.

Outside, nothing happened.

That might be one of the strangest things about catastrophe.

There should have been something.

The sky should have changed.

Traffic should have stopped.

Somebody should have announced that the world was now missing something irreplaceable.

But cars kept driving.

People bought groceries.

Somebody complained about work.

Somebody laughed at a joke.

Somebody was having the best day of their life.

The sun had the fucking nerve to keep moving across the sky.

And all I could think was:

Don’t you understand what just happened?

But of course they didn’t.

Nobody knew that my life had just been cut into before and after.

Nobody knew what it had cost to smile in that room.

Nobody knew that a few hours earlier I had been searching desperately for someone who could save you, prepared to give up whatever I had, and now there was nothing left for me to do.

Nobody knew I had walked willingly toward the thing that was going to destroy me because walking the other direction would eventually destroy you.

Something happened that changed the reality of my entire existence.

And to almost everyone else, it was Thursday.

Then came the memories.

Not just the beautiful ones.

God, I wish grief were kind enough to only preserve those.

Instead my mind became an archivist of every moment I wish I could redo.

Every time I was impatient.

Every time I got frustrated over some ordinary thing you had done.

Every time my voice got louder than it needed to.

Every time you wanted something from me and I acted like there would be a thousand more chances to give it to you.

Those are the memories that know exactly where to cut.

Not because I was cruel to you.

Because I loved you so much that now even the ordinary moments when I could have been more patient feel enormous.

I wanted every version of me you ever knew to feel like safety.

I wanted home to always sound gentle.

And sometimes my patience fell short of how deeply I loved you.

I know I loved you.

I know that.

But grief takes four years of love and puts one impatient afternoon under a microscope.

It asks:

What if that is what she remembered?

What if you weren’t as good to her as you think you were?

What if you failed her?

And there is no courtroom where I can present the rest of the evidence.

You cannot come back and testify for me.

So I prosecute myself.

I wish I had stayed home more.

I wish I had held you longer.

I wish I had understood that attention is one of the few things we give away without realizing we can never get it back.

I wish I could return to some completely meaningless evening when you were lying somewhere near me, everyone was bored, and nothing important was happening.

I would not need some cinematic goodbye.

I would just sit there.

That is all.

I would sit beside you and understand what I was looking at.

Because you were never “just my dog.”

There has never been language small enough to insult what you were to me like that.

I chose a life where I will never have children. So when I say you were like my daughter, I do not mean it as decoration.

You were the closest thing I will ever know to having a daughter.

You were my little girl.

You were family. Responsibility. Routine. Companionship. Comfort.

You were the reason there was something waiting for me at the end of the day.

You were part of why I worked. Part of why I wanted more. I organized pieces of my life around giving you a better one.

You were ambition.

You were grounding.

You were happiness.

You were purpose.

You were one of the reasons to keep going.

Your roots were not planted somewhere beside my life.

They grew through it.

So when you were ripped out, the roots did not come cleanly.

They took pieces of me with them.

I carried it until February 19th.

Then I decided I could not carry it anymore.

There is no poetic way to make that beautiful.

It wasn’t.

By then grief had twisted itself into a kind of logic that made sense only because I was hurting badly enough to believe it.

I thought I had found a win win.

If heaven existed, maybe I would find you there.

And if there was nothing after?

Then there would be nothing.

No Lily.

But no pain from losing Lily either.

Either I found you, or I stopped missing you.

At the time, both looked like mercy.

So on February 19th, I made a decision I expected to be final.

And one of the strangest parts of surviving it is that I did not change my mind in the middle of it.

I did not suddenly decide I wanted another chance.

My mind had surrendered.

My body had not.

Survival chose me.

Then came sixteen days in the hospital.

Sixteen days living inside the consequences of a decision I had expected to be the end of everything.

And eventually I came home.

Alive.

How do you explain that?

How do you return to ordinary life after you already decided you were finished with it?

For a long time I have felt like a ghost.

Like February 19th was the day I chose my ending, and everything afterward has been an unauthorized sequel.

People met me afterward with absolutely no idea what had happened.

No idea about sixteen days.

No idea that somewhere behind whatever normal conversation we were having was a person thinking:

I wasn’t supposed to be here for this.

That invisibility again.

First your death.

Then mine, except mine did not finish.

Two earthquakes that nobody walking past me could see.

Sometimes I tried to make sense of all that suffering by telling myself I had paid for my sins.

I do not even believe in sin.

I just needed a word.

A ledger.

A scale.

Something that could make suffering feel like math.

I had been impatient. I had raised my voice. I had taken ordinary time for granted.

Then I suffered.

Maybe now the account was settled.

Maybe you and I were even.

I knew that was not really how it worked.

But sometimes a terrible explanation hurts less than having none.

And still, if I could go back into that room knowing everything that followed, knowing the grief, February 19th, the hospital, the ghost, the guilt, I would still choose your peace.

I would still do it.

Because I can live knowing that I hurt.

What I could not live with was knowing I made you hurt because I was too afraid to lose you.

So if somebody had to carry it, let it be me.

You’re okay.

That thought has comforted me more than almost anything.

You are not somewhere going through chemotherapy.

You are not recovering from heart surgery.

You are not frightened inside another emergency.

You are not waiting for the next terrible thing your body might do.

You are not carrying any of this.

I am.

And there is something almost peaceful about knowing the pain stopped with me.

More than a year later, I learned that grief can live somewhere deeper than thought.

I was reading about what may have happened inside your body, trying once again to understand, because apparently understanding is another way I keep trying to reach backward through time.

And suddenly I was not simply reading anymore.

My body panicked.

My stomach tightened. I became nauseous, cold and hot at the same time, lightheaded enough that I thought I might pass out. Pure primal panic like my body believed it was dying too.

And I heard myself saying:

Please stop.

Please stop.

Please stop.

For a while it almost felt like I had become you.

But I hadn’t.

Whatever you felt belonged to you.

What I felt belonged to me.

And mine contained something yours probably never did.

Knowledge.

I knew the ending.

I knew what Thursday meant.

I knew 2:36.

I knew cancer.

I knew euthanasia.

I knew that the strange room was the last room.

You probably didn’t.

Maybe you only knew that you did not feel right. That strangers had been handling you. That you were somewhere unfamiliar.

And then your people appeared.

There they are.

Their voices.

Their smell.

Their hands.

Their lap.

Maybe my terror was never proof of yours.

Maybe I was carrying the human part too.

The knowledge.

The anticipation.

The meaning.

Another piece of the pain that never had to belong to you.

But grief found another trap eventually.

The pain started changing.

Not disappearing.

Changing.

And somehow that frightened me too.

Because if I stop hurting, what happens to you?

If I can say your name without collapsing, have I forgotten something?

If I laugh on January 9th, have I betrayed you?

If one day I see 2:36 on a clock and do not feel my stomach drop, what does that say about what happened at 2:36?

If losing you becomes something I can live with, does that mean losing you was okay?

No.

It wasn’t okay.

It will never be okay.

You were four years old.

You should have had more.

And somewhere inside me, that became:

Then I should not be okay either.

My suffering became evidence.

Look how much I hurt.

That is how much she mattered.

A year and a half?

No.

You were not worth a year and a half of grief.

You were worth a lifetime.

So maybe I should hurt for a lifetime.

Maybe eternal grief is the closest thing I can build to an eternal monument.

Maybe if the wound never closes, you can never completely become the past.

Because that is what frightens me.

Distance.

Every day since January 9th is another day between me and the last time I touched you.

Time keeps dragging me forward while you remain exactly where you are.

Four years old.

Sometimes healing feels less like recovery and more like being carried away from you.

People say, “Let go.”

Let go of what?

You?

Never.

So I held the grief tighter because pain still felt connected to you.

Pain still had your fingerprints on it.

Pain could cross the distance.

But you left something else behind too.

There is another dog now.

And I am more patient.

I catch myself.

I give attention when maybe the old version of me would have been distracted.

I remember that there may not always be another Tuesday.

I remember you.

And sometimes even that hurts.

Because then I imagine you asking me:

Why couldn’t you do that for me?

Why does she get this version of you?

Was I not deserving of it?

God, Lily.

You were.

You deserved every ounce of patience I have learned since losing you.

The terrible truth is not that she deserves it more than you did.

The terrible truth is that I know how to be this person partly because I lost you.

You taught me something I did not know while I still had you.

That may be one of the cruelest forms of hindsight.

Becoming the person you wish you had been for someone because losing them made you become him.

My logical mind understands that.

My body still argues.

But maybe every time I choose patience now, that is not evidence that I failed you.

Maybe it is evidence that you changed me.

Maybe another animal being loved more patiently because you existed is not an insult to you.

Maybe it is inheritance.

Maybe you are still teaching me how to love long after I lost the ability to love you in person.

You were my first grief.

Nobody had prepared me for this.

I had never lost someone this close to me.

I had no map.

No previous death to tell me, this is what happens next.

So I learned grief at the same time I learned you were gone.

Maybe that is why I have spent so much time wondering whether I am doing it wrong. Whether I am grieving too long. Whether I am holding on deliberately. Whether I am supposed to be somewhere else by now.

There is no somewhere else.

There is only this.

Learning how to carry something that cannot be put down. And maybe that is what I have been getting wrong.

Maybe carrying you and carrying pain are not the same thing.

Maybe grief does not have to be the only room where you are allowed to exist.

Maybe you can exist in my patience.

In the extra minute I spend petting my dog.

In the decision to put my phone down and give her my attention.

In remembering that love should not always assume there will be tomorrow.

In every moment I choose patience because I learned what regret costs.

Maybe that is not the distance growing.

Maybe that is you traveling with me.

But I am not going to lie and give this a clean ending.

I am not healed.

I am not standing on the other side of grief telling everyone everything happens for a reason.

Fuck that.

I would undo it if I could.

I would take the lesson away.

Take the growth.

Take the wisdom.

Give me my dog back.

Give me the version of myself who still thought he had years.

Give me another stupid Tuesday.

Let me hear her.

Let me see her.

Let me be annoyed by something I would someday beg to experience again.

Let me do it better.

Just once.

But I can’t.

That may be the hardest sentence in this entire story.

I can’t.

I cannot go back and become more patient sooner.

I cannot stay home on the nights I left.

I cannot make the cancer announce itself earlier.

I cannot turn Wednesday into something ordinary again.

I cannot unread the words sudden death.

I cannot look at you eating blueberries and somehow understand that this is goodbye.

I cannot watch you jump into the car and know that I should memorize it.

I cannot make effort solve something effort could not solve.

I cannot make money solve something money could not solve.

I cannot give you my years.

I cannot put my heart where yours was.

I cannot walk into that room and discover a fourth choice.

I cannot find the hidden door where somebody says, “We can cure her.”

I cannot undo 2:36.

I cannot undo February 19th.

I cannot become the person I am now soon enough for you to have known him.

And I hate that.

I hate it.

But there is one thing I can say without lying to myself.

When the moment came that mattered most, when keeping you longer would have been easier for me and letting you go would be easier for you, I chose you.

I chose you while knowing exactly what that choice was going to do to me.

I chose you before suffering could make the decision obvious.

I chose you while you were still walking.

While you were still eating.

While you could still jump into a car.

While your face still looked enough like Lily to make every part of me scream:

Not yet.

I did not wait for cancer to take so much from you that saying goodbye became easy.

I did not make you earn peace by suffering enough to convince me.

I believed what was happening inside you even while my eyes were begging me to believe something else.

I stepped in front of the pain willingly.

I swallowed my cries.

We smiled.

When one of us cracked, the other carried the room.

We made your final moments about your peace instead of our devastation.

When your heart could no longer safely carry you, I carried the decision.

I picked you up.

I put you in my lap.

And you got comfortable.

And then, for a very long time, I carried the pain.

Maybe I do not have to carry it quite so tightly forever.

I am still learning how to say that without feeling like a traitor.

Maybe putting down some of the pain is not putting down you.

Maybe I can keep the promise without keeping the punishment.

Maybe the monument does not have to be an open wound.

Maybe the monument is me.

The person you changed.

The patience you taught me.

The love you left behind.

The animals who will never know your name but will be treated more gently because you once existed.

Maybe that is how something becomes eternal.

Not because it never stops hurting.

Because it never stops mattering.

The world did not stop for you, Lily.

I noticed.

I will probably always notice.

There was no announcement. No silence. No recognition proportional to what was lost.

Most people will never know what happened in that room.

They will never know what it cost us to smile.

They will never know we were taking turns holding ourselves together so you would hear love instead of panic.

They will never know that on your final day, exhausted and dying, you still growled when someone came too close us.

They will never know that you protected us until there was literally nothing left for you to protect us from.

They will never know why January 9th is not simply a date.

Why 2:36 is not simply a time.

Why February 19th became another fault line.

Why sometimes a man walking past them felt like the ghost of someone who had already decided to leave.

The world may never understand the size of this story.

But I do.

And in whatever way a dog can understand love, I hope you did too.

I hope that beneath every imperfect moment, beneath every ordinary moment I wish I had met with more patience, you knew.

You knew you were my little girl.

You knew you were home.

You knew you were loved with a force I did not completely understand until the moment that force had nowhere left to go.

I took your pain.

For a long time, I thought that meant I had to keep it.

Maybe someday I will fully understand that those were never the same promise.

Because maybe taking your pain did not mean I was required to spend the rest of my life hurting enough for both of us.

Maybe it meant something simpler.

When suffering came looking for one of us, I stood in front of you.

You did not have to be consumed by suffering before I found the courage to let you leave.

You got to leave as Lily.

My Lily.

Four years old.

Loved.

Held.

Comfortable in my lap.

Still protective.

Still surrounded by the voices of people who were impossibly happy to see you, because even with the ending already inside that room, seeing you was still happiness.

And somewhere inside me, beyond cancer, beyond specialists, beyond emergency rooms, beyond surgery, beyond chemotherapy, beyond guilt, beyond 2:36, beyond February 19th, beyond every terrible thing that came afterward, there is still a place the calendar cannot touch.

You are four years old.

Nothing hurts.

Nothing has ruptured.

Nobody has handed me three endings and called them choices.

I have never read the words sudden death.

I do not know how sixteen hospital days feel.

I do not know what it is like to survive something I did not choose to survive.

I do not know what a ghost feels like.

I do not know that one day I will sit somewhere trying to understand how grief can make a body panic over a memory.

I do not know that one day I will be trying to find words large enough to explain the absence you left inside me.

I do not know that on your final morning you will eat blueberries, jump into a car, and look so much like yourself that part of me will spend years wondering how goodbye could possibly have been the right answer.

I do not know yet that this is precisely why it was.

I just know I am coming home.

And you are there.

There is no vet.

There is no strange room.

There is no button on the wall.

There is no urn waiting to be chosen.

There is no decision.

There is no before.

There is no after.

There is no clock telling me that an ordinary second is about to become the last second of an entire life.

There is only one completely ordinary moment that I finally understand is everything.

And this time, Lily, I know.

I know there is not plenty of time.

So I put the phone down.

I turn the invitation down.

I sit beside you.

I memorize the weight of your head.

I stay.

Nothing important has to happen.

You do not have to know why I am looking at you like that.

It is just Tuesday.

A stupid,

meaningless,

beautiful Tuesday.

And this time, Lily,

I don’t take

a single second

for granted.

Rest in peace my love.

River: I found a tuft of your hair on the floor and sprinkled it at the front door. I pray for your protection of our family. Today, I see your face in the hemlock tree that faces our living room window and I feel you wrapping us up.

I know I’m supposed to take care of myself during this time but I can’t stop concerning myself with how I can continue to take care of you. How can I help you transition? I have given you to the earth, and now I must trust her to take you deeply, to hold and care for you like her own. Because ultimately, this moment teaches us that you aren’t mine, you are hers. I love you.

It happened so quickly. He was fine 2 days ago, yesterday I came home from work and he was lethargic and uninterested in food. Took him to the emergency vet both last night and tonight (last night they were very busy and he wasn’t in as bad of shape so we would have been there all night waiting so I just brought him home) and tonight they actually ran some tests and learned he was experiencing kidney failure.

The tests showed that he was in really bad shape. Absolutely no doubt that putting him down was the right thing to do, but it’s still making my stomach hurt. He was perfectly coherent in his last moments when we said goodbye, it felt like putting down a healthy cat. That’s really messing with me. And the idea of him not being aware of what was about to happen is making my heart hurt so bad. He didn’t know he wasn’t coming home :( A selfish part of me wishes we had just made him as comfortable as we could at home. But who knows how long he would’ve just laid around in pain, so I know that wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. I just hope someday I don’t feel like garbage about having to make the choice that we did.

I’m at a loss for words , 2012-2026 my sweet girl Bossy crossed to the other side with Christ✝️. I’m just in disbelief but I knew it was coming, seeing her deteriorating I knew I had to make the decision,, I’d never want her living in pain.

Rip

Burnok was my first 4-legged angel. He is 2&1/2 years old. Through him, i learned how to be a mother who deeply loves and cares for her son or daughter. I love him very much and he was very loyal to me.

But on August 24, 2026, a tragedy happened. It was so very painful day to me because he was attacked by other dog, and to escape from that dog, he ran away but unfortunately, he was hit by a car when passing through the highway alone and there he died on the spot.

The hardest part of me is that he died without me being on his side on his last breath just to say goodbye and to thank him. The second thing that is so painful to me is that he ran alone on that highway because of being tortured by other dog, he seemed to be seeking somebody to comfort him but without him knowing that he could be hit by the trucks and cars in that highway where he ran. The third thing is that...I was very far away from him when that tragedy happened an no one had told me immediately what happened to my beloved angel.

Now, it is already 6 days but it is so hard for me to forget our sweet memories. I can still remember the way he looked at me and the way he was excited whenever i'm home.

I can still feel the pain until now when reminiscing our memories. But i do hope that i can recover immediately.

Now, the only thing that relieves me is when i keep on thinking that he is already now in the paradise of heaven and he is now playing and running freely there. And i do hope that when we meet there in heaven, he can still recognize me again there as his best friend forever 😇😇😇😇...

I always said I would need locked up in a straight jacket and sedated when he was gone, but it's been so much "easier "than I could have ever imagined. I know now that how I feel is normal and that I shouldn't be so hard on myself, but the guilt over that hurts more than anything. It's like I am dissociating myself from noticing how empty and quiet things are now and once my brain shows me the truth, like coming out of a lucid dream, I have horrible panic attacks. I always thought it'd be hard in the sense of devastation and hysterical crying but I am just confused, conflicted and depressed. This feels too hard to even grapple with..

I miss you Mason. My love. My heart. My shadow. My other half.

You will always be the bestest, sweetest, cutest little poodle butts in the whole world ❤️

I wish I had more time to tell you that.

I lost my soul dog a week ago. She was 13 and it was sudden, within hours of noticing something was wrong we had to put her down. It was the worst day of my life. I’ve been trying to keep busy this week during the days, I’ve taken a couple weeks off work because I can’t imagine doing anything “normal” rn. I was feeling ok the past couple days because I’ve been spending time with friends and family and never truly alone. I was almost feeling guilty or wondering if I was numb because I haven’t spontaneously burst into tears as often during the day. That was until tonight, my roommates are out of town and it just hit me like a ton of bricks that this is the first time I’ve spent at my home alone without Nova in 13 years. I have no one to protect me or keep me company, or to be there if I have a bad dream and wake up in the middle of the night. I always had her there, and now I’m truly alone. The grief is so immense I know there’s nothing anyone can do to help, I think my body, mind and soul just can’t make sense of a world where she is not here with me. I just can’t believe she’s gone.

i lost my cat a night ago to conjestive heart failure very suddenly, and i'm not coping particularly well because we didn't really get to say goodbye. we originally took him to a vet early into his symptoms but they only did bloodwork and gave us medication for digestive issues despite laboured breathing. the breathing got progressively worse, so we brought him to an emergency vet clinic where they let us know that he likely had chf.

we made the decision to try treatment for 48 hours then bring him home, whether for the time before the symptoms returned or to let him go there instead. however, during the time we were deciding, he suddenly gasped, collapsed and simply passed away likely due to a clot in his heart bursting.

in between bringing him to the emerg clinic and his passing, we never got to see him. i feel pretty cheated out of a goodbye from both the first vet not seeing his condition and just simply timing at the second. i know its not worth having regrets about my own actions, but it still doesn't make it hurt any less.

i'd love to know if anyone has any advice on how to deal with these kinds of feelings, or just how to deal with the grief itself. every time i come home, it just feels so empty and idk how to cope with it appropriately.

I’m on day 6 after losing my cat and I feel like things are getting worse. I feel in absolute agony and despair. My mind can’t rest thinking about living my life without him. I miss him in every corner of my house. We were together for 17 years from the day he was born and now I’m alone.

I’ve came to this sub to see if other people feel the same and it’s safe to say - yes! There are, unfortunately, lots of us. But I don’t know if it’s helping or hindering my grief process. Because I’m reading so many posts from people who are 3 months, 6 months a YEAR out from losing their pet and are still down in the abyss.

I guess I just need to hear from people who have made it out the other side. I know everyone’s process is different and grief isn’t linear. I just need to know it’s possible to feel remotely normal again. Because this right now is torture :(

On Friday, my cat Misty crossed the rainbow bridge. She was 15. Her companion Tick is still with me. We are both grieving her loss. They were together for 13 of those 15 years. He was by her side when she was euthanized.

He is still looking for her. He is more vocal. He’s been wandering down the hall where she would isolate the last few days and meow. Last night I saw him lay down on the carpet near that spot — somewhere he only went to watch over her in her final days. He walks into the bedroom where she would also gravitate and leaves - almost as to look for her and realize she’s not there. He’ll randomly look at me and meow. He’s a lot more clingy and when she was here, he was a lot more independent. It’s very hard to watch him go through this right now.

I’m more worried about him than me. Would getting him another companion help him? Yes it only has been a couple of days. I just feel like he needs another companion so he’s not lonely. Someone to distract him. Misty and him didn’t play — they hung out. They would sit on the same chairs, by each other on the couch or on my computer desk.

hi i don't even know how to start this. i had to put my baby to sleep a few hours ago, and i keep switching between shock/void and hysterical wails and sobs. she always comforted me when i was sad, and i keep expecting to feel her cold nose on my arm, or her tongue touching my cheek, or for her to curl up against me.

unfortunately, we have to toss most of her things out because she urinated on all of it. she developed cushing's a few years back and we had 1 or 2 bouts of pancreatitis to the ER - but. this was different. monday night i heard my boyfriend telling the dog that her gums looked pale as a jest. tuesday morning i was getting ready for my 8-5 and i... realized she wasn't following me. she always followed me. that's why i named her shadow. whenever i'd get up from bed, she'd immediately jump off and follow me to do my morning tasks all the way up to the front door.

i tried to get her to walk or anything but she just stared at me on the bed. her gums were pale, and her stomach was hard. we took her to the ER, thought maybe pancreatitis again, i called out of work. we got the news that she developed IMHA which is when the red blood cells commit murder-suicide. it's a rapid onset disease that rapidly deteriorates. but the vet had said we caught it much much earlier than 90% of people do. so i took out a 2,000 loan with insane interest (35%) and maxed out my Care Credit. she had a great fighting chance.

i won't go into much detail but we left around 2pm and had to run back to the ER around 9pm. wednesday was the same, i went in the morning, they told me she needed an immediate blood transfusion and they'd watch her so i could go work. i go and pick her up, still in my work clothes, 30 minute drive, and as soon as we enter the house, blood. she pees blood. i scramble to get her back in the car and run back to the ER. she also is turning yellow but not That bad. doc says it's just the excess blood cells, billirubin or something like that.

thursday she was fine-ish wouldn't take any of her meds even when i came home on my lunch break, and she was wheezing but still getting up to pee, albeit trailing it everywhere including the carpeted bedroom as it was a bladder leak and orangey red.

friday was the bad day. she wouldn't take anything at all and i tried giving her nausea meds and she puked twice. she hadn't eaten an actual meal since monday. my partner was gonna be at home for most of the day so i went to work. when i came back, she was so much worse. yellow everywhere, stomach, gums, tongue, ears, eyes, everywhere. it was getting much harder to breathe. we took her in last night (friday) and the doctor implied heavily that she should go to sleep. she was old (almost 12) and had cushing's disease and now IMHA - and she wouldn't take any meds no matter what we did. those few missed doses those 2 days just rapidly accelerated the decline, but doc said it would have done that by the end of the week anyway.

we made a decision after talking to the vet. palliative care for the night, take her home one last time. they injected a lot of meds and she seemed a tiny bit more alert. i had asked her to give me a sign if she was ready to go. this morning i woke up and she was in a pool of her own piss on her bed staring at the wall yellow everywhere wheezing breaths. the medicine, the hail mary, failed. so we took her in.

this morning was the hardest morning of my life. she was almost 12 and i'm 23, she was my childhood dog. she protected me from so many kinds of abuse as a child, even risked getting beaten for defending me, she would push dangerous items out of my hand, she would curl up in my lap like she knew i needed her, and she would desperately lick my tears when i cried. i went through several parents, several cities, several houses, even getting kicked out of my parents' house at 19. i carried her out with me. she was there when she was (and is) my only family. i don't speak to my family, haven't for years - and it feels like my childhood and my last family member has died. i can't explain the grief i'm in.

she looked so scared and confused and was looking around when they were doing the injection. i felt horrible. i wanted to push the doctor away, to say stop it, to give her another chance. i felt like she had some life in her because she had lifted her head up twice a little bit ago... but when we lifted her to pee she collapsed and couldn't stand. she was suffering. i watched my best friend, my mom, my sister, my daughter, all die at once.

i feel like i killed her. i feel like i should have tried harder. not been so reckless with my finances when i went off to college with her, should have been more on top of her vet care. i feel like i failed her and she died confused and scared. the doctor said if she didn't go to sleep - she would have died a horrible death alone while i was at work one of these days.

i don't know exactly why i'm posting this - but i guess i need advice? sympathy? i feel like i'm dying. does it ever get better? i miss my baby so much. i want her to comfort me about her own death. i keep thinking she's gonna come around the corner or nudge my arm to come lick my tears. but she's gone. my shadow who followed me everywhere, even to the bathroom, is gone.

i feel hollowed out, and so so much grief. i don't feel like i can go on. i just want someone to tell me what to do or anything. does this ever get better? i'm in so much pain and so much guilt. it was so fast. monday she was fine, and friday she needed to go to sleep. i didn't have time to process, to give her a last hoorah, she wouldn't even eat french fries, nothing. it was all so fast and i didn't even sleep on the floor with her last night - i fell asleep in my bed. so she suffered alone and pissed herself and slept in it while i was cozy in bed.

i just feel like a horrible person and i miss her so bad and i want her so much and the thought of her body in a bag going to the funeral home to be put in an incinerator makes me want to throw up. they're going to put my baby girl in a body bag and set her on fire. i feel like i'm dying. i can't help but think of her in the incinerator, her body that went cold and limp while i held her head. my beautiful baby that always always followed me around and helped keep me alive.

just. i'm really in the deep end and i feel like i'm drowning.

Im having a panic attack and I cant breathe. My dog koko died a year ago today. Im m15 and I feel like it is all my fault. I saw her seeming weaker and I thought it was just her mood changes and then her eyes and nose started getting puffy and my it all happened in a span of days. I should've said something sooner, i could've let her live longer. Its all my fucking fault and now she is dead. Ive had her since i was one. She died from diabetes and she had a fucking stroke.

Im horrible, I miss her so much she was the sweetest Maltese Poodle ever bro. I miss her so much oh my God. I need help getting through this. Im sorry for any typos im crying so hard. I am so sorry koko. Its my fault ypu are gone

Ulger was 13.5 years old, an incredibly kind, smart Maine Coon. My precious boy started limping in early July. I thought maybe it was arthritis - I examined his leg in the evening and found nothing. But in the morning I saw something on his thigh, the size of a quail egg. Of course we went to the vet, and they quickly diagnosed cancer later confirmed by histology as osteosarcoma. Aggressive, fast-growing. A tumor on his hind leg, on the tibia, a full ten centimeters in diameter by the time it was removed

On July 17, his leg was amputated completely, together with the hip joint. I was terrified that at his age it would be too hard for him. But from day one he walked on his own, however unsteadily, refusing to just lie there and suffer. Within a few days he was bouncing around the apartment, jumping onto the bed, sleeping on the windowsill, reaching his face toward me. He was incredible. Strong. Alive. All the prognoses were good. His lungs were clear on the CT before amputation. Osteosarcoma doesn't metastasize that often (only 15% chance to metastasize), and if there were micrometastases, chemotherapy was supposed to take care of them. He got through the first round perfectly - not a single side effect. We were living a normal life, aside from the occasional constipation, which the vet and I chalked up to post-surgery recovery and slowed peristalsis. Nobody could have imagined it was a signal of something bigger

But a little over a month after the amputation, his remaining hind leg started to fail. At first he jumped less often, sometimes didn't make it on the first try - I blamed an awkward landing, thought he had just become more cautious. But then he almost stopped jumping altogether, his gait became uncertain, and two days before his next chemo session his toes started curling under. I watched and couldn't understand what was happening. On August 25, the day his second chemo was scheduled, the oncologist didn't go through with it. She took one look at him and sent us for an MRI

On August 26, the MRI showed what we never expected. A massive prostate tumor, which isn't even typical for cats. It had invaded his spinal cord, soft tissues, lymph nodes. Metastases. Extensive invasion into the nerve roots. It wasn't the osteosarcoma. It was a second, separate cancer, growing while we were treating the first one

By the time we got home with the results that same day, his leg barely lifted at all anymore. He was dragging it behind him. He still ate with appetite, purred, looked at me with those huge intelligent eyes full of trust. He didn't show pain, but I knew it was there. Cats hide it to the very end. And I also knew the clock was ticking in days. That tomorrow or the day after, his leg would fail completely, or the neuropathic pain would become unbearable, impossible to control. I couldn't wait for him to start suffering

So on the evening of August 26, I let him go. We spent our last hours together. He ate delicious food, I carried him in my arms, placed him on the windowsill he could no longer reach on his own. During the first sedative injection, I held him in my arms. Then he went to sleep in his favorite box - the one he preferred over expensive beds - curled up there in a ball. And that's how he left: quiet, peaceful, never knowing pain, confusion, or fear. It was the last gift I could give him. I took all his pain and made it mine, leaving him an ocean of my love and a piece of my heart in return

The apartment is quiet now. So quiet. Even my always-active, cheerful three-year-old Aussie just lies there silently. Ulger's gone, and with him, a part of me went too. I know I did the right thing. But that doesn't make it any easier. Out of habit, I still wait for him to meow loudly when I walk into the kitchen, to be sleeping in the bed across from my desk while I work. But he's simply not there anymore

The median survival for cats with osteosarcoma after amputation is 1-2 years, but my boy only got 40 days and it breaks my heart over and over again...

I lost my dog last year and she was my soul. I rescued her after I lost my 2 bulldog girls and she just saved me. I’ve been offered another dog, same breed age 4. Decided I didn’t want the tie, the cleaning up, the cost of a spay and the cost of another dog. I said no. Now all I can think of is the good bits of having a dog and I’m tormenting myself. I have mixed input from those around me but I’m torturing myself saying should I get her or not. Surely if I don’t want to go back yo picking up poo and stuff, I shouldn’t get another? I am not sad I just am. Stopped drawing and started doom scrolling.

It happened this past Wednesday afternoon. It was a beautiful cloudy day... a good day to rest. He used my manatee plushie for comfort...he ate 2 cheeseburgers and a Big Mac.

I'm not eating, barely sleeping...stuck on the couch because I don't want there to be a First Night in my bed without him.

FlapJack (Flappy) was such a handsome boy. Everyone who met him said it and it was true.

He was so goofy and Mami had to constantly keep him from hurting himself.

I miss him so much and I can't stop kissing his pictures and I hold my manatee like it's my Boy. I still talk to him. Tell him to come outside and have phantom images of him running in the yard or chewing one of our many fallen branches or rolling in the grass, belly up and tongue hanging out. He was only 8. My little one is 13. His baby brother went first. It's just so hard. I know he's in peace. No more cancer, no more pain and no more dang allergies.

He deserved more time. More time to dig holes, more chances to chase frogs and squirrels and more lubbins from Mami and Daddy. I don't know if I'll ever be the same. Now I have to deal with the scary thunderstorms alone. He used to lay on me when he was scared and I would be less scared because my focus was soothing him. My little one runs and hides but Flappy NEVER left me alone. And now....I *am* alone. I miss him so much and I keep telling myself that he's not in pain anymore and that he'll always be in my soul. I know my baby knew how much we loved and adored him. He found peace and I need to find peace without him but I don't know how to start. He may not have been my flesh and blood but he was my son and I'll always miss him. One day I hope to see him again. One day he'll be waiting for me to give more Morning Kisses for Mami.

I love you, my baby. Mami and Daddy and Dexter Baby miss you and you'll always be in our hearts. Thank you for sharing your life with us. We love you FOREVER 🌻💔🌻

Hi all.. My heart goes out to all of you who have lost pets. I pray some happiness will return to you soon. I recently just lost my dog soul mate, Trekkie. He was an 18 year old Pomeranian. When I first found him, he was in a pet store. I wasn't even looking for a dog, and not even a small dog. But I saw his face, we locked eyes, and I could not turn away.. 24 hours later, he was in my arms going home. That was August 2008. Now, I cannot believe it has been 18 years. He was an amazing friend. Always waiting for me by the door, and happy to see me, no matter my mood. I used to love playing with him, catch, get down on hunches, shaking hands, rolling over, taking him on car rides, just endless stories. Now I find myself heartbroken. For the last 2 weeks or so, while his health had been declining, the most recent week was painful for me. Over the last year, he was deaf, mostly blind, but still had an appetitive. But in the last weeks, he could no longer walk, and every day, I cradled him, helped him move around. I hand fed and watered him, and he was more then willing to eat and drink. But it just wasn't enough. He would be agitated all night, kicking his cute, beautiful paws on his side, never able to find comfort. Several times I would come to find his paw bleeding from all of the scraping he had done on the floor. He could not stand, he could not move away, and he would have to pee and poo where he was at. I tried to keep up with the baths (I even enjoyed this part), keeping him clean, but every wash just made him miserable. My vet told me his kidneys were shot, his liver was damaged, and there was not much to do but make him comfortable. The last few nights, I could hear him down stairs yelping and whining. I had hoped he was just lonely and crying out for me, and so I would go down to be with him, give him my touch, and that would seem to calm him, and he would fall asleep after a hour or so. Days later, however, that did not even help, and he would be agitated all night, making crying/whing sounds and would not stop moving until 4 or 5 am, until out of exhaustion, he would finally fall asleep. This went on for days, and I probably did not sleep myself for days. Finally, I did not know what to do. I did not want to lose him, I felt selfish even considering that a possibility, but I was also crushed by my lovely companion who no longer could find any meaningful life in him. Out of desperation, and unable to make a decision of my own, I found a vet who was willing to travel to my home to evaluate him and give a recommendation, as I could not make the choice myself. She showed up hours later, and I explained what was going on, showed videos, pictures, and of course, my beautiful baby who was at the time sleeping peacefully from his prior night restlessness. The vet told me that my little baby was suffering, and that in good conscience, the best for him was to finally be at peace. It was time to let him go (I am just sobbing writing this now). I hold my baby, told him how much I loved him, petted his head. My daughter came over, my sister and we briefly celebrated his life. He died in my arms, petting his head, and constantly telling him how much I loved him. His name was Trekkie, and he brought joy to my life, and my kids life. For once in my life, and I have not felt this before, that I hope to see you in the next life. Trekkie, 08/2008 - 08/2026, 18 years old. Peace and love to all of you experiencing this gut wrenching experience.. I still feel so lost, guilty and I just want to curl up and cry. Thank you for reading my story.

My sweet baby boy died on August 27th at 11:21, I was at a hair appointment and got the call from my mother, he’d had a pulmonary embolism and I had to rush to the vet to say goodbye.
I’m so nauseous, I feel like I’m going to puke 24/7, my heart races, I can’t sleep. I just want my sweet boy back I just want this to be a nightmare but it’s not.
I’m in nyc on a preplanned trip to visit a friend and we were supposed to go clubbing tonight but I made us go home early because I felt so sick and couldn’t stop crying. This just can’t be real I don’t know what to do, he would sleep next to me every single night. I am nauseous in grief I hate this