I have to brain dump about a bad pet health situation so it's going behind a cut cuz nobody needs to see that shit.
So my dog is dying. Or rather, my dog has a tumor (probably cancer but we didn't get a biopsy so can't say for 100% sure but it does not actually matter) that is growing and will become incompatible with life. It's gonna make it so he can't poop, basically, and obviously that's not a tenable situation.
This oddly isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened with a family dog? My partner had a jack russell that had to get abruptly put down because he couldn't pee, and it turned out that a tumor had cut off his urethra somewhere in his body and nobody knew until it was a Problem. He was happy and playing and then dead, all in the same day. I really struggled with it.
But this is somehow worse? I say somehow like it's weird, but it isn't really, since this is our first dog, we've had him for ten years, I love him so much and he brings me so much joy every day. And now I start crying when he's really happy and playing because I know he won't be soon, and I start crying when he's sleepy and his head is in my lap and I'm petting it because I know I'll be doing that pretty soon while he goes to sleep for the last time in a vet's office.
And I know I should be grateful, and I am, that he's not suffering. He doesn't know he's nearing his end, he just knows it's harder to poop and he's gotta do it more often. He'll be vital and happy and active until his end, and that's good for him, I think, but so so hard. I know it's what he needs, I know it's a mercy to him, I know it's saving him from a terrible death, but it still feels like murder. There's no, like, progression into the slowness of old age. And he is old, ten is a pretty good age for a mid-size dog, but I know in my bones that without this new kind of tumor (he's got a bunch of fatty ones that we *thought* would be what got him eventually) he'd have a few years more. And it's not fair at all that he doesn't, because he's got so much life left. He was supposed to go back to the lake and have a nice time, since we learned last time in a very stressful way that he can't go swimming as much as he could when he was young. He should be going camping again. He has so many favorite toys to wear through still.
And what hurts so much is knowing it's coming and not knowing when. We'd just bought him an Advent calendar and now I don't know if he'll even get to use it, much less see the end of it. I know for sure that for the first time in...well, at least a decade, that I won't have a dog on my birthday. And I'm looking at my life and just seeing holes, and hardships. I can't help but preemptively live through the reality of having to take the dog sling out of the back seat. Of having to pack up all the dog stuff, his beds, his toys, his food bowls. Of having to give away the food and treats he's not gonna get through. I think of how many times I talk to him during the day, the stupid songs I made up for his mealtimes, the rituals of when he gets his meals and his meds and letting him out in the morning before I take my allergy stuff. I think of the ramble I always take him on at my inlaws house, so he can wander around and probably poop somewhere and I can escape the house for a bit and make sure there's nothing that needs attention outside where nobody else really goes.
I know this is all part of what you sign up for when you have a pet. I know it's never gonna really feel fair.
I'm trying to keep things as normal as possible for him, aside from all the crying I'm doing. He's getting spoiled more, of course - gotta work through this backlog of treats, after all - and in the background my brain is planning for the After. I know we're gonna get a dog again eventually, so we can save a lot of his stuff. He doesn't really tear up his toys, he's got two good beds we can save to use again, he's got his bowls and suchlike. I know my future is sobbing while I clean those things and put them away. And I'm trying to save myself some of that by doing bits of it now. I washed his nose prints off the upstairs window now, so I won't be erasing him after he's gone, I'm just cleaning the window. I'm washing his blankets more than I usually would, and trying to consolidate his toys in one spot so I have to search less later.
I don't know. This sucks, and I'm struggling so much with it, and at the same time I know this terrible limbo only breaks when he's gone, so I don't want that either. And it feels like an elephant in every room, and I'm trying to not talk about it both so I don't depress people since everyone else in my life is also fucking struggling and also so I don't cry at everyone, but then it's just me, in this house that's soon going to be haunted, choosing what I do with my day so that I'm with him as much as I can be and just being consistently crushed with the terrible knowledge that we're going to have to take him to a place he does not like and they're going to mercifully kill him and then we're going to have to leave him there, but unlike the other times we've had to leave him at a vet (for various surgeries, when we cried for the whole time he was gone, essentially), we don't get to go back in a day or two and have him there, overjoyed to see us. We'll get him back as dust. In a bag. Merry Christmas.
