One hot August week, she started showing signs of
aging, walking around a little more slowly than usual. She was getting rather
old, so I figured she was probably showing signs of arthritis. However, everything else seemed normal in her day-to-day activities
so I was not overly concerned at that point. By the end of that week, she
started going downhill a little more quickly. By Monday, she seemed a little
worse and it was then that I got concerned, driving her to the country to her
“favorite doctor.” Surely, this would be a quick fix, I assured myself. No need
to panic quite yet.
Who is she, you might ask? Her name was Angel, a big part of our family…a Rottweiler lab mix who was adopted while I was separated from my husband. She was 30 pounds and full of wrinkles as a three-month-old pup. Cutest pup I ever laid eyes on up to that point. I knew she would grow into those wrinkles in time. This was her last chance at getting rescued. As I went up to her kennel, she timidly went up to the cage door and licked me through it, wagging her tail. She had a very sweet, tender spirit about her. Yes, it was love at first sight.
When she was two years old, she moved with us out-of-state
to our new home. My husband left a few months later and she remained a comfort
to us when we really needed her. I can’t recount how many times I squeezed her
tight and cried all over her during those first few months, but it was a lot! Just
having moved to a new state, away from our friends and further away from my
family, she was our friend, our family. She was happy when I was happy and sad
when I was sad. Although I knew that the Lord was with us during that very
difficult, lonely time, she was almost like Jesus “with skin on.”
Fast forward almost ten years later, when she started
falling ill. On a Monday in August, I took her to the country to her
veterinarian’s office. Fully expecting her vet to say it was arthritis and
writing her a script for medication, we left that day with totally unexpected
news that I was not prepared for. After doing some blood work, she pointed out
that her gums, ears and tongue were whitish color, not the usual pink, which I
had not even noticed. A few minutes later, she came into the office and said
that Angel was critically ill and that, “If she was a person, she would be put
into the ICU.” Her red blood cells were very critically low and her white cell
count was way off too. The vet said we could try some medications (along with a
steroid) to hopefully reverse the damage. This was a far cry from the
“arthritis” I thought she had!
After doing an ultrasound, the vet said she was bleeding
internally and one of her organs was quite enlarged (if I remember correctly,
it was either the liver or pancreas) but she could not tell where the bleeding
was coming from. We were to come back in 48 hours to recheck her blood work
after the medications had been started and see if it would begin to reverse
itself. By then, she wasn’t eating or drinking and laid in one spot all day. I
had to carry her (all 80 pounds of her) to the car. Unfortunately, her counts
had not gotten better and we were told to come back the next day, Thursday, to
recheck the blood count again. All of the rest of Wednesday, she did not move
but laid in one spot. She went from being almost as active as she normally was
the week before to this in less than a week.
By Wednesday, I knew she was not going to pull through. The
boys were in Florida with the church youth group and when they had left that
Saturday morning before, she was still pretty normal but just walking slowly.
The boys called every day to check on her. By Tuesday, I said it did not look
good and the vet thought it was cancer. By Wednesday, I told them she may not
be around when they got back, though I was hoping she would be so they could
say good-bye to her. At first, I prayed she would hang in there long enough for
the boys to come home (the next Saturday). However, I could not bear seeing her
suffer like this for much longer. I also prayed that I would not have to make
the decision to put her down because she had literally been part of our family
for over eleven years. My prayer soon turned to asking God to take her very
soon and quickly because it tore my heart up to see her go downhill so fast, though
part of me was still hanging on to that very last shred of hope that she would
make a miraculous recovery.
She had an appointment with the vet that Thursday afternoon,
but did not quite make it that long. I called into work knowing that she
probably would not last the day and I could not stand the fact that she might
have to die alone and the last thing I wanted to do was to walk in to seeing her
body on the living room floor. Right before noon on that Thursday, she had two
seizures that threw her across the floor. I went over to her, rubbing her side
and saying it was okay to let go. I know without a doubt she was holding out
until the boys came home, but she could not do it any longer. I put my arms
around her, saying through my tears, “Its ok, you can go now sweet Angel. I
don’t want you to suffer anymore,” and that was it.
I was not prepared for the intensity of the pain and
loneliness I faced, especially at night, when she usually jumped on my bed and
went to sleep with me. I did not know my heart would break that much over a
dog. Actually, she was more than a dog to me because she was there when I was
going through the hardest years of my adult life. God prepared me over two
weeks before she even got sick that death was going to touch our family in some
way. He was there comforting me in Angel’s final moments as I was all alone,
just me and the shell of what was the best thing that came into my life after
my husband left.
If God went to this much trouble to prepare me, comfort me,
answer my prayers of desperation and quench my aching heart at this loss (of an
animal), how much more would he do so for you, who have lost or are losing a
loved one? His Word says he will NEVER leave us nor forsake us…even when a beloved
pet dies.
When she died…He was there. He is there for you too.
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