This morning when I woke up my mother told me the dog's legs gave out and she just physically could not get back up. We brought her water and she drank it laying down. She tried to move and her whole bladder would empty. We kinda all knew it was time.
This dog has been around almost as long as I have. She was just about 18 years old, which for a golden retreiver is insane. I'm pretty sure they're expected to live 10-12 years. I've had this dog since I was 6, so although I didn't pay that much attention to her, it was just something that was always there. I took that for granted.
So back to today, the dog was laying on the floor in the exact same spot all day, couldn't get up. Interesting that she went out into the living room, because she's usually in my mothers room and when she woke up the dog was already laying out there unable to get up. I kinda feel like the dog sorta knew it was time to. I don't know if the way a dog thinks is anything similar to the way a human thinks, but if so I wondered to myself what could be going through the dogs mind as she just laid there. She wasn't panicking, wasn't struggling. She was just laying there calm. Could she have understood and accepted?
We carried her to the car and that's when she was scared. The dog didn't like car rides, ever. She would usually shake a bit, pant a lot, just nerves. This car ride was a completely different kind of shaking, and when we took her out of the car and put her on the table at the vet, it still didn't start. The dog wasn't nervous like a car ride. She made eye contact with me and I could actually see and understand straight fear in her. I never thought of animals to really have the thinking capacity that humans do, but looking in her cloudy cataract covered eyes I really wondered. She was terrified. Did she know that it was time? Was she afraid because she didn't know what would happen next? I don't know how she could know, the dogs never seen another die. Or seen any death, except for the occasional bird back when she was younger, but back then she didn't seem to understand. She'd drop the bird and just nudge it, not sure why it was limp. I don't know maybe the dog was just scared because she didn't know why she couldn't stand, but if that were the case she wouldn't have been so calm at the house for hours unable to stand.
I normally don't experience emotions. I don't see death as sad, especially because a majority of the time death comes naturally and it means it's just time to go, if you're old enough to die naturally then living even longer is in no way beneficial, you'd be physically a mess and it's always for the best to just let it happen instead of doing what you can to prolong life. But my mother was crying, even my father was choked out. Even my sort of sister was crying a little. I didn't quite cry, with the shivers and the bawling and all of that, but there were tears when she was given the sedative. She was still shaking, still scared. She started getting calmer, and as I stood while her body was going limp, she looked at me, and her eyes slowly closed. I stood there and watched my dog drift off, as I was the last thing she saw. Knowing I'm the last thing she saw, and not knowing what comes next, what could have been going through her mind, and realizing just how much I took the dog for granted, it hit me hard. It was eerie to go back to the house and open the door, and not see a dog waiting there. When I walked in there was a slight pause in my brain at that realization.
It's a very hard situation to describe. All this thinking about death, what could happen, to actually watch something die as it stares directly in your eyes. It's an image that so far hasn't left my mind even for a moment. And I don't know what to feel about it.
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