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Today with heavy hearts, we had to put our beloved 12 year old Juneau to sleep. her suffering from cancer was too much to bare. She fought a good fight against cancer but she got to the point where she could no longer get up by herself much less walk.
We will miss you Juneau, our loyal companion and gaurdian.
You did the right thing by helping her pass on to her next life.
I was hesitant to do the same for my 19-year-old cat Weasie, whose weight had steadily plummeted for six months from the liver cancer that metastasized to her chest area and throughout her bloodstream. She'd kept on living life to the fullest at her usual manic energy level, devouring food and staying active, so much so that I think she even had the vet fooled. (Ever since September I'd been taking her in for regular weight checks, but she wasn't X-rayed until December 29th.) When the ounces continued to melt away after thyroid medication was tried and adjusted, then adjusted again, it couldn't be denied any more.
Only in her very last days did everything start to catch up with her. As happened with the OP's dog, her hind legs began collapsing beneath her if she so much as hopped. She stayed true to using the litter box - even for the last time before we kept that final vet appointment - but had also had some accidents. Most importantly, though, she told me in multiple ways that she'd loved every minute of her long life but couldn't stand existing any more. If it wasn't her hunched posture, it was her walking with a plodding gait with tail lowered or her just sitting there staring toward nothing. Cats are vain, so it hurt her pride to be drooling while food stayed smeared on her nose and mouth and something "gunky" oozed from her left eye. All this reminded me of an elderly person confined to a nursing-home bed with nothing to live for. And if all the visual clues weren't enough, Weasie took to sounding off with everything from clipped whimpers to drawn-out howls. She was beseeching me to not make her endure another minute of all the pain and humiliation. So I put selfishness aside and had her PTS on January 14th. And watching her leave behind agony to begin her new existence convinced me that I, too, had done the right thing.
In both cases the "pet owned" people found out what it meant to care enough to let go. And in both cases our departed animals thank us for that.
So sorry for your loss. I believe she is now running the great fields of the sky, happy and healthy, with lots of new friends. My Alixe and Charlie were there to greet her. <<hugs>>
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