h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We had to put our old Collie dog down on Wednesday. We knew it was coming after some kind of attack at the end of January, when she had a smell about her like raw meat and she wanted to hide in the hall (it reminded me of one of my migraine attacks but this lasted a week and then she pulled through). Then in March she had a stroke and we thought that was her this time but no, she thought back to full health again, her head straightening up after a definite droop to the left. In April she had a minor bleed which frightened her as she didn't know what was going on. I thought if this doesn't stop, then I am going to have to call the vet and that will be it but she looked at me with such fear as though she knew what I was up to, so I held off and it soon stopped. Then last weekend she had diarrhoea which nothing would help with, so this time we had to call the vets as she was no longer in a fit state to fight for life anymore.

She had a big presence and now you can feel the vacuum of her loss. Ten years ago we had to put another of our old dogs down but it left me with a guilt complex because again she didn't want to go and it took me two years to go over this. During this time I became accident prone, running over the lawnmower cable and storming off, for a very long walk in the country, returning at night. I also tried to snap off a branch, blown down by the wind and it snapped back in my face, knocking my glasses off, leaving one eye bloodshot and a bright, flashing spot on the other eye, like a migraine aura.

When I lived at home, we had cats and one had a cyst on its neck from a fight (It was a tom). For years it seemed, we applied this cream from the vets which shrunk it but never got rid of it. Then one night it got locked in a neighbours shed and died. My dad dug a grave for it and a shoe box was provided as a coffin. My brother painted a wooden tombstone for him and I put a decorative candle on the grave and knelt down in a silent vigil.

These are my tales of woe. Has anybody else here had attachment and loss issues with their pet? I lost other pets but notice how guilt played a big part in not just mourning and forgetting, unlike with the other animals.

When I was 16, I had a puppy. A few months after I got her, she crossed the street in front of our house without looking, and was struck. Not a fun thing to witness./ We rushed her to the vet, but she didn't make it.

We had an older dog who was pretty mean, and *he* lived to be 16. Only the good die young....

Yes well she was a fighter. In fact what you say about the good dying young is true. She was probably 14 or 15. She was a rescue dog which means she not only left a hole in our hearts when she died because we turned her character round from being a right nasty bitch, to a grateful one for all the time and interest we put into her life (she bit my four times, one requiring a butterfly stitch and bit a piece out of our old labs ear, then ripped it top to bottom in a later incident, when the vet had turned it into a cauliflower ear). The other hole she left when she died was in the carpet, from digging through it. We needed rescuing from her for a start but we missed her when she went

An appropriate comic strip:

http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2017/10/22