Letting Go 🎧
English

Letting Go 🎧

by

pets

Sometimes Love Means Letting Go (Audio🎧)

Today is one year since I had to put my dog, Coco, to sleep. She had cancer. Cancer is a sneaky, miserable, merciless bitch. Throughout her entire life, I fed Coco good, organic — and for a couple of years, raw — food, and in my hubris, assured myself that she would never die of cancer like other dogs. Well, she ended up with liver cancer anyway. She was half beagle, which means that she would eat herself to bursting if you let her... in other words, she never missed a meal in all her 11 years. But in the last two weeks of her life, she only ate every other day, as much as she could stomach, and seemingly only enough to keep her alive another day. That was heartwrenching enough, but worse yet was the trembling. She would tremble every waking hour, as if she was cold. I think another reason for the trembling was a fear of somehow letting me down; if I glanced at her or asked her what was wrong, she would tremble all the more. I was absolutely inconsolable. She had been such a big part of my life and I was beside myself.

She always slept at my feet, and in the morning, I'd be up before the alarm went off and I'd watch her sleep, still and at peace. I'd planned to take her to be put down on Friday, so as to put it off as long as possible. But on Monday, I woke up, felt her warm muzzle on my leg, and then heard her sigh and keep sleeping. Then someone honked a horn on the street and I felt the trembling and my heart sank. I knew I couldn't keep her alive like that one day longer. When I looked at her, she weakly smiled back and I saw the bags under her eyes and I knew she was ready to go. I think it's safe to generalize and say that as pet owners, we all dread the day when we have to let them go — especially when it's up to us to pull the plug. But I assure you that when the time comes, you'll find the wherewithal to say goodbye because it'll be for their comfort, and not yours.

So in memory of my Coco, give your pets a big kiss from me and love, love, love them as long as you have them. That's how they love you))

Attached is her last photo, the night before she left, in her favorite spot, resting (and not trembling!).

PS: How Coco came into my life is a story in and of itself, and I plan to publish it soon... in another language.

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