I knew this day was coming. Yesterday, Goldie fell at my mom's house and could not get up on her own for about 5 minutes. She struggled, helpless, on the lawn with my mom unable to help her. I wasn't there and mom is in a wheelchair. She called me, sobbing, saying she could not do it anymore. I had been watching Goldie tiptoe around in pain, her legs collapsing underneath her, getting a little worse each day.
So today was the day I said goodbye. It took all day of going back and forth, changing my mind, thinking "Maybe one more month..." She would have some good moments and I'd think that I couldn't, and then she got stuck coming up the 2 big steps into the house, and I knew I had to. Back and forth, all day, but I had made a 3 pm appointment at the Humane Society, and we ended up going for that one last ride.
I have on million words trapped inside me about my dog, all of them good. I'm sad, but I'm also glad she is free of pain, because she had been hurting for too long.
On the way home from the Humane Society, I realized how much of my heart has been caught up in her struggle. I have been feeling dead, lost, trapped - all at once.
And now, even though I have the great sadness of missing her, I'm also feeling as if I am crawling out from under a great weight.
When I got Goldie, the shelter told me she was middle-aged (they were wrong - she was much younger). I liked the idea that she could be my first dog, a kind of practice dog that I'd have for a few years and not get so terribly attached to.
I was so laughably wrong about all of that. 10 years, 2 months and 25 days later I don't see how I could have been more terribly attached. We had a great, close, adventurous life together and I'll always be thankful for every bit of it.
I think the most fitting epitaph is what I said to her every single day of her life: "What a GOOD girl."