Not Yet

Well, the advice we got from our vet and a few people who were familiar with the scenario of having to let a pet go was, "You'll know when..."

We had just finished a last consultation with our vet where we had overcome some final indecisiveness and made plans for a home visit for euthanasia the next morning at 9:00. However, when we got home, Kuña'i was about as waggy, energetic, and responsive as she had been for at least a week. She must have responded really well to the fluids we've been giving her for the past few days. And if we were going by the "we'll know when it's time" theory, we had a sudden and definite feeling that she was telling us it wasn't time yet. For many pets, suffering through some sort of painful illness (and of sound mind), you hear that they sort of reach a point where they decide they need to go, and they just sort of shut down. But our dog is such a difficult read (how do you know if her indifference and listlessness is just her dementia or weakness and toxicity). Even so, though, I swear we can get no indication at all she is in any kind of discomfort. And we don't want it to get to that point-so we're definitely not going to do anything aggressive, invasive, or that can't be administered at home in terms of medication, but we're just going to go for a few more days till it seems that she is not responding to the fluids we are giving her. At a first sign of any suffering, or a couple of days in which she just is not responsive, we will be ready to put her down.

It was definitely a weird night-we've had a very thorough sort of process of having our "last" of everything and making sure we were giving her a proper send-off. The timing was all planned-I was taking the day off today and Sharon was going to be busy with various friends over the next few days while I visited Terre Haute. But "our girl" had different plans, I guess. I'm feeling so much better-I think I was (since the diagnosis was so sudden) being overwhelmed and stressed out to the point where I didn't know if I was making an objective decision (about the "when" part). And Sharon was worse off than me. But I have a really collected and good (as good as one can feel in this situation, of course) feeling about how we're proceeding now. A few more days for Kuña'i to experience the simple pleasures of this life before we can let her go in peace.

On a side note-Cory called yesterday with some words of comfort related to heaven and knowing that she'd be waiting there. I definitely don't tend to think of "heaven"-related things in very specific or cut & dry terms, but I did have this thought concerning the place:

There is really no question as to whether all dogs go to heaven; for it to fit the definition of the place, we must assume that dogs are somehow part of it.