All dogs go to heaven, right?

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you might remember this story from back in October of how I ended up with so many animals it looked like a zoo at my house.  Then in November I shared photos of my babies here.  Well, I had to put my little Buddy down on Monday, and my heart is so broken I can’t even tell you.  I agonized over the decision to do it.  I thought about it for weeks.  I didn’t WANT to do it, but I couldn’t stand to see him suffering.  Apparently his trachea was so closed up he could hardly get any air in there, and it was not a fixable problem (the vet doesn’t know why it was like that).  So we tried medicines.  I gave him medicine to stifle a cough twice a day, a medicine to keep the fluid out of his lungs once a day, a medicine for his heart twice a day.  Nothing helped.  He walked around all day and did this horrible hacking coughing breathing thing that sounded like he was having an asthma attack.  Twenty-four hours a day.  But other than THAT, he was fine.  He still wanted to be petted and run around outside in the yard and cuddle and eat all the time.  So it was hard for me to come to a decision to let him go.  But two weeks ago he got pneumonia again and his breathing got even worse.  He spent 5 days at the animal hospital and they switched him to some different medicines, adding in an antibiotic.  Apparently once you get pneumonia you’re prone to getting it again and again.  Once the antibiotic was gone, he was back to sounding REALLY bad and struggling with his breaths.  It was hard to watch and hard to listen to.  It’s funny how his loud labored breathing kind of became a background noise in our house, like the television on in the background.  After a while of hearing it 24/7, your brain kind of starts to ignore it and you don’t notice it so much.  Last Friday night I lay in bed with this little guy and I cried my eyes out trying to muster up the strength in my mind and my heart to put him down so he wouldn’t suffer anymore.  He laid there with me and licked my face and put his little head on my chest like he was telling me it was okay.  And even on Monday when we took him to the animal hospital to say goodbye, they made us wait SO LONG in the waiting room that so many times I almost told my husband, “Let’s get out of here.  I changed my mind.  I don’t want to do it.”  My husband told me the next day he kept thinking the same thing too.  I know in my mind what I did was the right thing, but I’m having a hard time convincing my heart of that.  My heart is sad, and my heart misses my little Buddy Boy, and my heart knows the house is too quiet now.  Damn.