Saying Goodbye to Bella

The year continues to be cruel to Erin and I. We already lost one of our dogs back in August when we lost Sam and tonight we lost our other dog Bella. We’re both big softies so this is extremely hard for us.

It’s never an easy decision to have to let your pet go. With Sam he has acute pancreatitis and it was terrible seeing him suffer the day we took him to the vets so it was something we had to do. It was still extremely hard to do and it really affected me for a few weeks.

Bella has been living with bad arthritis for a few years now and was on a bunch of medication for it but it took a turn for the worse recently and she was often crying during the day and yelping when we helped her up stairs. This weekend was awful for her though and she wasn’t putting any weight on her leg.

A visit to the vet and some x-rays indicated her arthritis had turned severe and our only course of action was more pain medication. A week earlier we had already picked up a new pain medication so we tried adding this second.

When we got home she refused to move, refused to walk. She just laid on the grass and I had to carry her into the house. For the next four hours she cried as she was clearly in pain. She still wasn’t able to get up and go out to pee so we decided it was time and it’s an awful choice to have to make.

Both dogs were 13 years old. They were a huge part of our lives and we’ll never forget them but it’s not easy at all having to say goodbye.