by babysan

Created on: July 01, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Intellectually I understood that my dog, Maggie May, could only live so long. Her time stayed in the far away future, along with my own time to move on. She had trouble one day but a visit to the vet gave us both tools to go on living like carefree youngsters, which we did for a few months. Then Maggie had another problem that I couldn't fix so back to the vet we went and came out with a couple of prescriptions and a diet plan. Undaunted, we carried on as before, loving our routines and each other.

Yesterday morning she experienced something we had never seen before, it was like she died for a few seconds. It wasn't a seizure which we had learned to deal with, this was different so I picked her up and rushed to the vet. As I stood in the doorway of the examining room, alone, while they took Maggie to another bigger and more brightly lit room down the hall, I was getting angrier and angrier that everybody else seemed to be going about their business as usual. The phone calls in the reception area, the techs coming and going in the hallways, incoming patients and those on their way home came and went in no particular hurry. "What is this" I shouted in my mind, "can't you see that the vet is working on my Maggie, BE QUIET". One tech even stood in the way of my view of the window to the room Maggie was in and had he not moved when he did I was going to have to ask him to please stand somewhere else.

After a tiny eternity the door opened and out walked the vet with Maggie in her arms followed by a helper carrying white blankets. They came back into our examining room, spread the blankets on the table and laid Maggie on them. She had been standing when she was taken out of this room, this little room that was becoming my whole world, but she wasn't standing anymore. I looked at the vet and, bless her, she looked me straight in the eye and started to explain. I heard her and I didn't, you know what I mean? Yes, her English was fine, voice loud enough, no big words that I didn't understand, it all made sense but was completely unacceptable. I'm not prepared to make this decision right now, it is way too soon, too sudden, there must be a way to take her home. But there wasn't, not if I wanted to spare her needless suffering.

So we had a couple of minutes together in that cold and sterile room. I held her while they taped a catheter to her leg and I held her when I said OK and I held her while life left her little body.

I got home, I don't remember driving. It is now

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