Losing a Family Pet is Never Easy

There is one heartbreaking reality to owning a family pet. After years and years of enjoyment and companionship, of taking care of them and letting them take care of you, you are inevitably going to have to say goodbye one day.

Recently, my family had to say goodbye to our 11-year-old Chocolate Labrador Retriever named Sasha.

To say Sasha was full of energy would be an understatement. Originally, we purchased her to keep our Yellow Labrador Retriever Maggie company, and help calm Maggie down. Instead, as they both got older, Maggie became more apt to doing her own thing and lay down and relax at times, while Sasha was the one that always wanted to be by your side.

Sasha wasn't a very large Labrador. She got heavy, at one point weighing about 75 pounds, but she should've weight between 60 and 65 pounds. Early on we started calling her "pygmy dog" since she was definitely the runt of her litter. As she got older, her nickname became "Piggy" for short, both because she was so small, and because she would eat anything and everything.

Unfortunately in mid-December 2009 Sasha started becoming really sick, usually after meals. She just wasn't able to keep food down all of a sudden. A vet visit and X-ray showed a possible problem with her stomach, and exploratory surgery showed her liver wasn't functioning properly.

That meant trying to get her to take her medicine and changing her food. While she was an incredibly loving dog, giving her a pill was about as easy as wrestling a bear. And she turned her noise up at her new food, something very out of the ordinary for her.

Instead of getting pills and new food, we tried just one pill, a mixture of new and old food, meals of just rice and IV fluids at the vet. But no matter what we tried, in any combination, she just wasn't able to keep it down.

The saddest part was that every time she threw up, she had this horribly sad look on her face like she had disappointed us or done something bad. Yet I could never get mad at her, and only tried to comfort her.

Sasha spent the first full week of January at the vet clinic, getting IV fluids and medicine and eating just a little. We were hoping for a rebound, hoping that we'd at least get to take her home and see if she could get back into her normal routine.

But a recovery just wouldn't happen. She still couldn't keep food down, and she had lost a dramatic amount of weight in a short period of time. Despite the fact that she was still happy when we came to visit her, she was in the early stages of starving, and she wasn't going to get any better.

On January 8, 2010, Sasha was put to sleep. My family and I stayed with her the entire time. It was only fair, she had been such a loyal dog throughout the years that she deserved to have us by her side at the end.

I've heard people over the years say they don't want to get a family pet because they don't want to deal with the heartache that comes when you have to say goodbye. But to me, that's just silly. The memories I have of Sasha definitely outweigh the pain of seeing her put to sleep.

If we had never adopted Sasha, I never would've had a dog to sneak over to my bed in the mornings and try to lick my face if she woke up before I did. And I wouldn't have had a dog that could play ball until she passed out. And I never would've had a dog that seemingly never had a bad day.

Sasha was everything a great dog should be. And I wouldn't have traded the 11 years I got to know her for anything.