Tag Archives: euthanasia

Credit where it’s due…

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I spend a lot of time on this blog bitching and complaining about things. No apologies. It’s just who I am as a person. However, when credit is due, I like to think I cover those bases too. So, with that said, here’s the credit due this week:

1. Summit Bridge Veterinary Hospital. As soon as I found Hershel on Sunday morning, I was on the phone immediately to Summit Bridge. The fact that on a Sunday morning, they were open and immediately available for an emergency phone consult put them steps above just about any other practice I’ve used. Assessing that the situation was likely beyond their capabilities, they immediately referred me to two local emergency vet options. Quick, professional, and focused, they’re a solid recommend in my book if you have veterinary service needs in the local area.

2. BluePearl Pet Hospital – Christiana. BluePearl, like a lot of the other large chain veterinary practices get a lot of guff. I suspect that’s at least in part because of the prices involved when it comes to emergency or specialty vet medicine. I get it. However, everyone I worked with there on Sunday morning was fantastic. Hershel was in triage within 45 seconds of walking through the doors and the receptionist seeing his condition. Fifteen minutes later, the emergency vet was providing a detailed breakdown of his condition, pros and cons of treatment, and likely outcomes. She was compassionate and responsive to questions throughout our conversation. The tech who walked me though options for cremation or other arrangements was incredibly professional. The vet and tech tending to the actual euthanasia somehow managed to be a physical presence and yet disappeared in plain sight, allowing as much time as I wanted both before and after administering the final drug cocktail. From start to finish, the team at BluePearl displayed competence, professionalism, and compassion both for Hershel and for me. I don’t regret a nickel of their fee.

3. Jorah. This sweet, slightly neurotic boy has been unfailingly happy through what has felt like a very long couple of days. After sniffing around a bit Sunday night, he settled in to his own routine of snoozing in the living room, barking at the squirrels, and chasing the birds from the back yard. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done if he hadn’t been here when I got home with an empty crate on Sunday afternoon.

A very good girl…

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I remember the day I brought Maggie home like it was yesterday. I wasn’t even looking to add another dog at that point. It was a few weeks before Christmas and I didn’t want the inevitable headache of taking a puppy on a 1600-mile round trip drive. Then a friend at the office put up a “free puppies” sign. Mama had died giving birth and the large litter was eating the family out of house and home. It was a fire sale – everything must go – before they were dropped off at the shelter. Surely there wasn’t any harm in going to take a look. As I recall, people from our office ended up taking some if not all of that litter.

I came back after lunch that day with a sleepy chocolate lab snuggled down inside my coat. For the next almost 14 years, she was my shadow. Through the successes and failures of life, tens of thousands of road miles, changes of jobs, changes of houses, there she was with a wagging tail and a smile on her face. Maggie was one of the most consistently happy dogs I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.

For the last few years, though, Maggie was also a very sick dog. Sometimes it felt like we were keeping her together with bubblegum and bailing twine, but she was always game for another trip to the vet and eager to greet everyone there. As long as she was up for pressing on, there wasn’t a test or procedure I was unwilling to try or a specialist I wasn’t willing to meet. Over the last week, despite some new meds, I watched that old spark slowly fade away. 

There’s more we could have done. The vet would have pumped her full of more meds if I’d have asked for them. It would have been so easy to go down the road of calling for extraordinary measures, but she deserved better. She deserved to meet the end walking in under her own power and while she still had some of the old nobility about her.

I couldn’t ask her to suffer so I didn’t have to – not after so long together, not when she’s done everything I’ve ever asked of her and so much more. 

From start to finish Maggie was a very good girl – a once in a lifetime dog. 

My life was incalculably better because she was part of it and is now the darker for her absence. I’m going to miss her terribly.