The post I have needed to write...

Warning: this post is very sad, about my dog. That is all I can say.

It has been a little over a year since we brought our babies home from Ethiopia.
And so it has been a little over a year since we said goodbye to our original boy, our dog Pablo.

Pablo was ill when we left. Two years prior he had been given only months to live but miraculously had hung on and remained fairly healthy.

We even left our dear pet sitter and vet instructions on what to do should he take a turn for the worse while we were on the other side of the world. This is the same lovely pet sitter who emailed us photos twice daily of our sweet Pabbies while we were on our long CCRM vacations. She was ecstatic that we were finally going to become parents when we left for Ethiopia.

We were not prepared for what we found when we came home.

Pabbies. Emaciated. Sick. Nearly gone, but hanging on.

We saw him right after crossing the threshold of our new lives with our babies in our arms. After laying our babies down for their first night in their new beautiful nursery we just held him and sobbed. We knew what we had to do.

I decided it needed to be me. The next day, still sleep deprived and shaky and terrified and overwhelmed and elated at being home, I called our vet. They booked us--me and Pabbies--into the last appointment of the day so we could have some privacy.

Somehow I left the mister with the two babies, who were still feeding nearly constantly, who were crying quite at bit at their new unfamiliar surroundings, ripped apart from every single thing they had ever known, and put Pabs in the car with me. I took a bunch of his favorite treats and sobbed on the twenty five minute ride to the vet, feeding him treats and petting him the whole way.

When I got there I was a basket case. I could barely take him out of the car.

And things only got worse.

They couldn't get a vein. They couldn't start an IV. He was crying, howling in pain.

All those treats I thought he was happily gobbling up on the way there were just sitting in his mouth. He was too weak and sick to swallow.

I had done nothing to ease his pain.

The vet had to make a decision to inject him in the stomach.

It was horrific. I could barely stand to hold him, to have me see my face associated with this horrible pain we were causing him, all while trying to end his life in a pain free way.

The vet was young and inexperienced and not our usual vet. She was crying too. The tech was crying. I was shaking and sobbing.

Pabs did not go quickly.
He did not go peacefully.
Every single thing that could have gone wrong did.
And I held his sweet body until he took his last breath.

We buried him with his favorite toys under a tree in our yard, and I look at that spot nearly every single day and wish I could have done more for his last moments in this life. I have never--will never--forgive myself for failing him in his final moments.

Oh Sweet Pabs. It's been just over a year since you were gone. You waited until your brother and sister got here and then you asked us, with those beautiful but old and sick eyes, to take you out of your misery.

I will never forget.

And it is shaping the way I think of things..so many things which I will have to write about here soon...about the way we treat animals in this world.

But I have needed to write this for a long time, to get it off my heart. Thank you, for letting me share it here.