[woogiebear]

Yes, I can also feel for your loss. I lost my Corgi mix last mid November. Only a few weeks after his 15th birthday. My husband and I grieved horribly. I still find myself crying over his loss, even as I write this. It was due to the amount of grief that prompted my husband to get Rotten. We even catch ourselves sometimes calling him Dudder.(which was short for MilkDud). Four months later we got Spoilt.

Although they do not replace MilkDud in anyway it has helped our grieving process tremendously. I have a gallery frame in the hallway that holds MilkDud's pictures and we look at them all the time.

His death was one of the hardest things imaginable for me and Scott to have to face. As old as he was it came on so quickly I didn't know how to handle it nor do I have faith to the day that I made the right decision.

He was given to spouts of stubborness. So when he passed up his dog food for a day, it was not seen as a sign. He often did so when he thought he was *too good* for it. He would often decide he wanted people food and that was that. So we would purposely only feed him dog food till he got off his high horse. I noticed that he had eaten a little of it, but not all of it, just as he normally would under these circumstances. He was old and cantankorous at time. He was not particularly active to begin with. His red muzzle now almost entirely grey, nearly blind and deaf, but still stubborn when he wanted to be. His favorite thing to do was to sit on his lead in the front yard and just watch the passerbys.

I went to put him on his lead, and it was then that I noticed upon looking down the top view of his body, that it did not appear to be the right shape. Something was wrong with the shape of it. I told my husband, look, look at Dudder. Something is wrong with him. He does not look right. At first he did not see what I was talking about and then I made him look at him from the top angle. He was bulging. From the sides. As he walked, it looked like a water balloon was under his skin.

I took him into the emergency vet hospital. It took them only moments to tell me the news was not good. He was having heart failure and there was nothing they would be able to do for him. Apparently, once heart failure begins, the innards leak fluid into the body cavity. There was so much fluid in his body cavity that the reason he was not eating was because the fluid was pushing up against his stomach and there wasn't any room for food to enter the stomach. So he wasn't being stubborn afterall, he was dying. They said there was nothing I could do. He was so old and eventually the fluid would continue to build and would end up pressing against his lungs cutting of his air supply. It would be a painful death of suffocation.

My husband was not with me at the vet hospital and I knew I could not just put him down without giving my husband a chance to say goodbye. The doctor was kind enough to drain as much fluid as possible from his body in an effort to give us one last day with him with instructions to watch him carefully for the fluid buildup. It allowed us to spend one last night with him before it was too late. He ate a couple of bites of hamburger, cooked specially for him and a little coca cola as that was his favorite if he could get it. I laid on the floor with him all night as he was not comfortable on the sofa.

By the next morning, it was painfully evident that the fluid was building up quickly. We did not want him to suffer. I made my husband come with me to the vets office. It was the most horrific experience of my life. We walked him at the house before putting him in the car and let him stroll a little when we got to the vets. We think he wanted to walk down the street a bit but at that time Scott was emotionally upset and said lets just get this over with, I can't take this. Afterwards we both really regret not walking him down the block.

It happened pretty quickly, but it stays forever fresh in my mind. They asked me if I wanted to give him a pre-shot before the main shot stating that it would calm him down. Knowing my dog would not be happy about anything going on in his nether regions I thought that may be a good idea. Now I think it was not. This pre-shot basically paralyzed him. His eyes became huge and he just slid down onto the table into my arms. This is not calming in my opinion. This had to be frightening to him. Not being able to see or move. I got right in his face so he could smell me and I was talking to him the entire time so hopefully he would not be as scared as I was. They administered the second shot a few mintues later and as determined as that little dog was, he could not blink or move, but he was forcing his tongue out to lick my hands while I had him in my face. He passed mid-lick. We carried him home and my brother let us bury him in his back yard in the flower garden. I wrapped him up in one of my nightgowns and my husband tucked his fish key chain in with him since he so loved going fishing with Scott.

I still love him so much and miss him terribly. Everytime I am at my brothers though, I make sure to say hi to him. And when we are having a BBQ and drinks, (he loved beer) I make my husband go give him a drink. I know that we made the right decision, to spare him a painfully slow death. But I will never forgive myself for agreeing to the pre-shot and of course there is always that nagging thought of what if I noticed sooner, would there have been time to do something else? The doctors advise me no, he was too old. But you know how it is. You always wonder.