I am writing this in tears as Apollos story hits so close to home. as i have posted to you during apollos illness and when you let him go, we lost our peanut to heart failure in february. the last few weeks were so up and down, and although we knew she would not be with us more than a few months, we had no idea that she woudl decline so rapidly. i did the SAME thing as you...i took her on short walks in the neighborhood to see how she was, and on her last one, a day or two before she left us, only a few driveways up she sat down, and i thought she was going to go right there....her gums became gray. in tears I called my husband, but then by the time i slowly got her home and she rested on the couch and she seem "ok" again. on feb 14, valentines night, while watching westminster with her laying next to me on the couch, i noticed that not only her belly was swollen, but even her legs and feet were bloated. I called the vet and knew that the end was imminent. we agreed to get her in to be seen 1st thing in the morning, as she was resting at that time, and we ended up spending a very rough night with her in our LR on the aerobed (she oculdnt make it upstairs, and ironically we had the aerobed out the entire week before when she was not well, but that day decided to put it away because we thought she seemed stronger...of course i pulled it back out that night). she even went outside in the middle of the night to go pee and rather than come back towards me walked behind the house in a snowstorm and laid under nook of the house. i had to geta flashlight with my husband and go bring her in, and we knew exactly what it was she was doing. I laid with her that night and told her she oculd go, that it was ok....i wanted her to go on her own. i did not want to have to make the decision. we had no idea that by the time we got to our vets office the next morning (less than a mile away from our house) that she would decline even more to the point that we would not even bring her home to put her to sleep. we thought it would be done here at home, and the vet offered to come at noon, but she declined so fast that morning that to make her go home i the car and wait for a few hours would have been cruel and unfair, if she did not go first one her own. so we let her go right there, and it was the hardest thing to do. but when she took that last breath we could see that the suffering had ended and her heart was healed, she, like apollo, had found peace. it still hurts, but know that the pain will ease over time, and apollo is with peanut and all the other babies there. we have a 2 1/2 year old son who talks ALOT and still asks why is peanut in heavan, and says things like "she is in my heart" (he hears me say that) and then looks under his shirt and says to his chest "peanut come out." we of course laugh and cry when he says that!
i hope that you find comfort here at BW and in your beautiful family and cami. you will all be in my thoughts and prayers, and next time i say a prayer to peanut i will ask her about apollo
callie mommy to henry our human boy
peanut at the RB on 2-15-05, age 6
and boady our old man, and peanuts best friend and brother, 13 year old golden
