It’s so hard to watch your dogs deteriorate. There’s a unique despair. It happens so quickly. All the sudden, they’re very, very old. Only a week or two of being sick and not moving around much, and they lose all their muscle mass. In a blink, it looks like they’re dying, and sometimes they are. And they can’t talk to you, they can’t tell you where it hurts or why they don’t want to eat or move around. Suddenly this loved one that you’ve built your life around keeping safe…is in mortal danger. You’re abruptly failing to be their caretaker. It’s inevitable, of course, so the failure isn’t a matter of blame, but that doesn’t make it any less impossible to swallow.
An instagram friend of ours has a pup named Oliver. She loves to dress him up in costumes and do photo shoots, and he is, of course, the love of her life, her special dog. He stopped eating recently. He’s 17. And she’s afraid they might not have much time together. So, she contacted the IG community (and others) about having a get-together with Oliver all dressed up, maybe one last time. So, we went. And we gave hugs, and ate sweets, and gave Oliver head scratches, and shed tears. Made both Liz and I think of Coco, very acutely. Like it was fresh, and it was only yesterday we’d watched the same horrible thing happen to our perfect companion.
A hard day. I’m so glad we went, if only so our friend knows she isn’t alone. We’ve been in that same hell. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through, and now she has to go through the same thing. My heart just breaks for her, because there’s nothing anyone can do. All I can hope for her is that she falls in love again, because that is the only thing in the world that made me feel better. Falling in love with another dog brought me back to life, because I died with Coco, I really did. And Joy brought me back. I’m so thankful for that. So relieved. It renewed my faith in the circle of life. It does keep going.
Hard. Day.
Night night.