Goodbye

jamross65

Well-Known Member
I have just returned home after putting one of my dogs to sleep.

She was 14 years old and it was her time. It still does not get any easier.

I bred her from a lovely bitch I had that was herself sired by Shadowbrae Drake the year after he won the Retriever Championship. She was one of only 4 in the litter and I kept her and another bitch that turned out to be one of the best I have ever had. She now stands in the run wondering where her companion is.

They have never been apart since the day they were born, and if my wife had not been here this morning to talk me out of it she may well still be with her litter sister, as the heartbreak caused of putting one down is now almost overtaken by her surviving sisters loneliness.

The act of putting my dogs to sleep reduces me to an emotional wreck. She sat with me in the front of the pick-up for the first time ever because it just did not seem right for her to be in the back on her own for her final journey. To feel her nose nudge my hand and see her eyes still look at me with such adoration, as if comforting me yet not knowing what is about to happen....

Her last sight was fittingly of the ground she knew, worked and was trained on. She is now buried beside her mother and another of my dogs next to a duck pond on ground I shoot. Some may laugh but I silently speak to them whenever I'm there and I feel like they have never left.

For her to collapse at her back-end out the blue last night would suggest that she has been carrying pain for some time and never showed it which was typical of her character.

Her tail wagged until the very end.
 
Thanks for that it brought a tear to my eye it brought back memories of the kind friend who was by my side for many years.

Stu
 
Gutted


When God had made the earth and sky,
the flowers and the trees,
He then made all the animals
the fish, the birds and bees
And when at last He'd finished
not one was quite the same.
He said I'll walk this world of mine
and give each one a name.
And so He travelled far and wide
and everywhere He went,
a little creature followed Him
until its strength was spent.
When all were named upon the earth
and in the Sky and Sea,
the little creature said "Dear Lord,
there's no name left for me."
Kindly the Father said to him
"I've left you to the end.
I've turned my own name back to front
And called you DOG, my friend".
 
Its a pain probably most of us on this site will have at sometime or other. I have been there myself and expect to be again in the not too distant future with a bitch that is now 14+. My heart goes out to you especially as you still have her sister. Just remember how luck you were to have such a loyal companion for so long and that it was her time and you did the right thing for her.
 
Saddened to hear of your loss, went through the same in October so understand how you are feeling, regards....callie
 
Never ever easy, the day comes when Todd leaves me will be a dark day for me, it will break me no doubt of that.

Nothing wrong with talking to them mate even though she is not with you now, we all do it if we are man enough to admit it.
 
Feel for you mate and while they are with you .you take them for granted. But the day you need to put a gun to there head or a needle in there thigh nothing is taken for granted. I have my old dogs in fitting places and some times i give the place a wide birth but the memories pour back when i pass them.
 
Jamross - I'm so very-very sorry. The paradox of a hunting life strikes again - love and death. Dogs take such a lump out of our lives. I am not ashamed to say that I have always dealt with my own dogs, that the tail wags are ever there - that the tail wags continue after the deed because of the nervous system reacting, and that I've wept in isolation over all of them as I make sure that I can do it alone. All of my dogs have little headstones which I make myself and are laid flat on their graves in special places.

My old head stalker asked me to deal with his favourite old collie dog as he just could not face it. I sent her to sleep and buried her on a rocky ridge separating upper and lower Corrie na Ba with a high view of the Kishorn bay and Southwards, then chiselled her name on the bedrock beside her.
That doggie has a better place than I'll have, and well deserved too ! If nothing else - this is the common factor for us all.
 
So sorry to hear that man, I cried like a baby last year when my lab 'flash' went at 10 with cancer. I'd just got a puppy to begin training to take over and let him take it easy but that never happened for him sadly.

Again so sorry for you.
 
JR - What a beautifully eloquent and fitting an elegy that is. My heartfelt condolences.

I always share a few words with Taff as I pass his resting place, tell him of the deer I've seen and how the moles are still throwing up enormous mounds, all ripe for digging. I still feel his presence by my side despite the time that has elapsed since his passing.
 
Lost my first lab about 6 years ago, and it hit me for 6. Her replacement is now 10, and permanently lame due to arthritis in a foreleg. You build up a very strong bond with a working dog, and the years fly by far too quickly. Pour yourself a dram, raise a glass to her and remember the good times you spent together.
 
Sorry to hear about the loss of your dog. Nobody would laugh at you mate re your comment about talking to your dogs. I am failry certain 99.9% of us on this board would do exactly that.
 
Sorry for your loss, for loss it is, and it's no man's shame to grieve.

My old dog Corrie is buried beneath an oak tree on the foot of bredon hill, I always stop and speak to him.

When he died my little bitch howled incessantly whenever she was left on her own, she had been with him from being 8 weeks old. It got to the stage when I asked the vet for something to calm her down because of the neighbours. Roger, our old vet, said, "Give her one of these tablets, that should do the trick. If it doesn't, take one yourself"!

Yours sadly, Simon
 
You have my every sympathy, the vet has seen me cry more often than my wife.
Every dog that goes takes away a piece of us and every pup that arrives brings a replacement.
 
Sorry to hear about the loss of your dog. Nobody would laugh at you mate re your comment about talking to your dogs. I am failry certain 99.9% of us on this board would do exactly that.
Totally agree .... Again, so sad ....
 
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