Old Hoosi

For the last year of my little Doxie “Hoosiers” life, I did pretty much everything for her. I got her out of her crate in the mornings, sometimes as early as 5 am, because she was whining to go out, and carried her outside and then carried her back in and fed her. I put her up and lifted her down off the chair where she sat with my wife. We put down pads on the chair because her bladder control was so bad, and we changed them a couple of times a day. There was nothing to be done, because her kidneys were failing, and she was practically blind from cataracts on her eyes. I did this and more every day for her until one day she choked a little bit on a bite of food and it set off a spell of coughing which resulted in one small seizure and then went into a coma, and in several hours she passed away with my wife and me right by her side. She was 15 years old. Other than being incontinent and half blind during that last year, she was not in pain. Our granddaughters loved her, and loved to pet her. She died in May of 2020 and they still ask about her, even our youngest who was only 2 years old still remembers her and asks if she “went over the rainbow bridge” I never, ever would have considered abandoning her, or even putting her down, since she wasn’t hurting. I had a toy poodle before her who did have cancer and was in such pain at 12 years old that I had to have her put down. The vet asked me if I wanted to leave the room while she did the injections and I told her heck no! I would not leave her alone at that most critical time in her entire life and have her think I abandoned her. I’m sorry to be so long winded, but I just don’t believe in abandoning family members.