No flowery words or bouncy rhymes tonight. My heart is heavy with sadness.
Today I had to take one of my dogs to her final vet visit. Hardest thing I've ever done. It was my Lexi. She was a tiny Miniature Pinscher that I adopted from a rescue group 6 years ago. Never knew her exact age--she was found as a stray--but we estimate she was 8 to 10 years old when I adopted her.
We have suspected for quite a few months that she had some kind of serious neurological problem--probably a brain tumor. She had a very rough weekend and I had the feeling we'd be making that last trip today.
Yesterday, around 4 p.m., she had a terrible seizure and even giving her a double dose of my other girl's phenobarbital did not completely stop her thrashing. And she kept trying to crawl into tight little spaces that she had never been interested in before. I must have spent 8 hours just holding her as much as she would let me, trying to keep her still and soothe her. It was very clear she was starting to not only be disoriented, but also to suffer.
So this morning I called the vet to tell him it was time and we went for that last trip. When he saw her, he said I was right--her time had come. Lexi normally weighed between 7 and 8 pounds, but today, because she had stopped eating much the past few days, she was below 5 pounds. And all the fight just seemed to have gone out of her--and man, for such a tiny girl, she had always had a lot of fight in her!
So I held her while she went to sleep and then softly stroked her as she quietly, peacefully took her last breath.......
I just hope she's having a grand old time at the Rainbow Bridge.....
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awordqueen