Hi Susan,

I know exactly how you feel. Today is day 3 after having put my beautiful brown eyed girl to sleep, she was 11 years and 8 months old German Shepherd. Everyone called her a miracle because in 2017 after a visit to the vet for a runny poop issue they had done an X-ray and found out she had a hole in her heart. We were beyond devastated. After lots of research we found a university hospital who plugged the hole and went very well. She had issues with her heart skipping beats so a month later had a pacemaker placed. The surgeons were terrific. Fast forward to today where my family and I scattered her ashes and it was absolutely gut wrenching and just torture. M beautiful girl always had so much energy, you would never know that she had a heart condition, she was strong, energetic and her outside did not match her inside. I always feared she would go into congestive heart failure at some point and she didn’t. She had the biggest heart literally but it was filled with so much love. She loved walks and being outside, playing with her balls, playing throw and very energetic. After we found out that she had an enlarged heart which no vet ever knew and she saw multiple vets, they also didn’t notice she had a murmur, it was an incident finding as we took her for diarrhea. We tied to keep her active but we were scared to do too much in case it would overwork her heart.but she always engaged in play and was active. She had all her regular visits and we did everything right by her because we love her. For the past few months she had struggles with a perineal fistula and was on an immune suppressant and ointment and after 3months or was healed but my baby struggled so much to go bathroom, you would hear the straining but she really was such a trooper through all of it. Her energy had gotten much less over time and she would lay on the floor and sleep most of the day, she was never food driven except she loved carrots. We always had to get her to eat but she would it, but as of late her 3cups a day she barely eat one and just got less and less overtime and the past couple of weeks it was hard trying to get her to eat, all she wanted to do was sit down, then this week maybe she ate three teaspoons of food and whilst taking her to the bathroom she peed at the door and her hind legs became unstable, she had been struggling to get up and would fall down, we even put doggie shoes on to help her get up and down, she had been struggling, so April 28th took her to the vet and she said she was anemic and quite bad and even with a transfusion she would only get a few days and she had diagnosed her with degenerative myelopathy she said it was also affecting her front legs. She told us we have the horrible and tough decision to make and we didn’t want her to suffer so that is what we did and do I feel regret and like we drove her to her execution yes, do I hate myself, yes, I want her back, my guilt is overwhelming. I also believe based on the doctors words that if she had only a few days and it would be worse, she wasn’t eating, was struggling to go bathroom that the right choice was made, I didn’t want to see her suffer, that too would have killed me, and what if she passed away on her own, and alone. So I have many emotions. I ask myself could the doctor have been wrong. So they layer a blanket under the tree and bought her out and placed her down gently, she didn’t even sit up which she did in the car when we got to the vet, if she had perhaps we wouldn’t have gone through with it. She was given a sedative and my family and I were with her and then the lethal injection and she was gone in seconds without any movement. These past three days have been the absolute hardest in my life. All I do is cry all day, feel guilt, sadness, a massive void that I can never fill, the hole is now in my heart. I don’t want to eat or do anything, I haven’t been working, I was fortune that they agreed to let me take some time but not more than a few days, I will have to work on Monday and I don’t know how I can do that. She has left a physical and emotional void in my life and I feel like any purpose I had to live has gone, I want to be her but I know I can’t and I also don’t want to go through this excruciating pain. I have a lock of (love) her hair that I just hold and cry all day with one of her toys, I don’t have a husband or kids as a support system and I grieve with my parents and my brother who is the pet parent but we have all been together for her whole life and now my life isn’t whole. To help with my grieve I ordered a 36×48 canvas with a photo of her face laying on the ground, it’s so beautiful and she has eyes that you would disappear in to and see her soul, and also a portrait of her, I just need her in my life and I need to see her everyday, she is forever imprinted on my would and my heart and I hope I see her again and wherever she is and if she comes back in physical form I know she will be loved because she was pure love and joy and she gave it to us and she will receive that back a million times over.I don’t know how I can ever get past this grief I am broken in to pieces and I don’t know how to piece myself back together, my pain is so immense that I am consumed by it and the thought of having to work 8 hours a day from Monday, I just hope I can keep myself together. Pretending to be happy over the phone is not something I can pretend to do.