Loss of a pet

[Goin Breakdown]

7 minutes ago, Draconator said:

It took Bella 9 years to fully accept me. Now when I work at my desk, she jumps up and sits right in front of me. That's her sign that she wants to be held. I hold her for like 5 minutes. She gets down, and 30 minutes later, she's right back up on my desk, rinse, repeat. 

That's awesome. My daughters cat sounds a lot like yours. Super slow to warm up to anyone besides my daughter. I really appreciate you and the others for chatting with me. It helps knowing others understand. I told my wife hat I feel like such an odd ball getting so worked up over a cat (as a 45 yr old guy). Kinda like what Teef was saying. 

[Saxum]

16 hours ago, PromoTheRobot said:

This is a bit off topic but I wanted to share this here.

https://www.sciencealert.com/dog-brains-have-unexpectedly-grown-larger-scientists-discover

 

If you're like my family, we speak to our dogs like people. The brighter ones, I think, pick up quite a bit after a couple years of living with their humans. I'm not surprised their brains are getting larger.

 

 

 

We lost both of our previous dogs to cancer,  First one Ivan had undergone cancer treatment and vet said she never saw a dog recover so well but it came back and we were not going to put him thru surgery again so was put to sleep.  The second one King(ston) seemed fine.  We found him lying against a wall and he looked at us telling us "I cannot get up".  We rolled him onto a cloth and carried to vet    Vet told us cancer came on quickly with a huge cancer cyst in her stomach and surgery was not an option.  We held on to her as vet put her to sleep.  My wife swore no more dogs.

 

My daughter has a small purebred German Shepard Zelda which we got from pound to be a companion.  She spends far too much time just lying around the house so I took to training her.  I remembered stories about an octopus opening jars and started making puzzles with her treats putting them in rope toys so she needed to untangle it to get treat.  When she mastered that I started putting treats under a milk crate which she needed to tip over to get treats.  For bigger reward treats I put it under 2 milk crates sometimes under the top milk crate,   She has learned all that and trying to find new task for her to do to get extra treat.  She actually has learned to recognize letter sounds and understand when we spell out B O N E so recently we started calling it a B1 (B one) which she has  not recognized yet.

 

I have a picture of our first bird on refrigerator -  a cockatiel named On-On which my first dog found on walk and refused to leave until my wife took care of it,  My wife nursed it back to health and it would do anything for her.  She even put it in wok once and On-On just let her making sound he normally made when he did not understand but trusted my wife completely.  He lived for 20 years before a snake got into his outdoor cage,

 

I have more pain from pets which have died than relatives and friends for with pets in each case I felt there was more I could have done for them.  Pets are like children to most people and like children they are dependent upon you,

 

 

[Augie]

17 hours ago, PromoTheRobot said:

This is a bit off topic but I wanted to share this here.

https://www.sciencealert.com/dog-brains-have-unexpectedly-grown-larger-scientists-discover

 

If you're like my family, we speak to our dogs like people. The brighter ones, I think, pick up quite a bit after a couple years of living with their humans. I'm not surprised their brains are getting larger.

 

 

I’m pinched for time and not able to read the article right now, but the wife and I recently saw something on TV about the domestication of dogs that We found fascinating. The most important trait for the transition was not intelligence, size, endurance or any of the qualities you might think of. It was friendliness. They were in a pack of wolves living off human scraps, and being friendly helped get them accepted. My Goldens have been leaders in this category, to the point that it is almost their most over the line traits. Just behind SHEDDING! 

[Goin Breakdown]

4 hours ago, Limeaid said:

 

 

We lost both of our previous dogs to cancer,  First one Ivan had undergone cancer treatment and vet said she never saw a dog recover so well but it came back and we were not going to put him thru surgery again so was put to sleep.  The second one King(ston) seemed fine.  We found him lying against a wall and he looked at us telling us "I cannot get up".  We rolled him onto a cloth and carried to vet    Vet told us cancer came on quickly with a huge cancer cyst in her stomach and surgery was not an option.  We held on to her as vet put her to sleep.  My wife swore no more dogs.

 

My daughter has a small purebred German Shepard Zelda which we got from pound to be a companion.  She spends far too much time just lying around the house so I took to training her.  I remembered stories about an octopus opening jars and started making puzzles with her treats putting them in rope toys so she needed to untangle it to get treat.  When she mastered that I started putting treats under a milk crate which she needed to tip over to get treats.  For bigger reward treats I put it under 2 milk crates sometimes under the top milk crate,   She has learned all that and trying to find new task for her to do to get extra treat.  She actually has learned to recognize letter sounds and understand when we spell out B O N E so recently we started calling it a B1 (B one) which she has  not recognized yet.

 

I have a picture of our first bird on refrigerator -  a cockatiel named On-On which my first dog found on walk and refused to leave until my wife took care of it,  My wife nursed it back to health and it would do anything for her.  She even put it in wok once and On-On just let her making sound he normally made when he did not understand but trusted my wife completely.  He lived for 20 years before a snake got into his outdoor cage,

 

I have more pain from pets which have died than relatives and friends for with pets in each case I felt there was more I could have done for them.  Pets are like children to most people and like children they are dependent upon you,

 

 

Thanks for sharing these stories man. I think I'm going to do what a lot of you have done and wrote out my thoughts. Sorry for your losses. 

[Success]

Sorry for your loss.

 

I have lost so many pets over the years - and I loved every one of them the same as immediate family.  It's one of the hardest things to go through.  

 

I've heard we see 'em all on the other side, if you believe that stuff. It cheers me up to think of that.

 

 

[BarleyNY]

On 5/16/2023 at 12:38 AM, Goin Breakdown said:

Maybe this is silly idk. I can't sleep and I don't have anyone really to talk to especially at this time of night. I don't do this kind of crap but I'm honestly feeling lost at the moment over my cat that passed today. I'm the kind of person that when anything gets lost around the house, something goes off in my head and I have to find it. I feel that way right now and I'll never get my dude back. Anyway I'm kinda just hoping that writing this helps. Thanks. 

I’m very sorry for your loss. Pets are part of the family. My corgis turned 2 today. Not looking forward to that day 10 or 15 years from now. 

[BarleyNY]

6 hours ago, Augie said:

 

I’m pinched for time and not able to read the article right now, but the wife and I recently saw something on TV about the domestication of dogs that We found fascinating. The most important trait for the transition was not intelligence, size, endurance or any of the qualities you might think of. It was friendliness. They were in a pack of wolves living off human scraps, and being friendly helped get them accepted. My Goldens have been leaders in this category, to the point that it is almost their most over the line traits. Just behind SHEDDING! 

 

I saw a program that did experiments with wolves and dogs. Each was put in a room with a cage. There was a stick sticking out of the cage. It had a piece of meat on the end in the cage. Both the wolves and dogs pawed at the stick until they got the meat. Next the stick was fastened so it could not move. Both the wolves and dogs tried to paw it out with no success and both got agitated. The wolves looked only to their pack for help. The dogs also looked to the people observing for help. We are part of their pack. 

[RussellDopeland]

Just lost my cat recently. You're losing your best friend when a pet passes. It creates a void, to say the least. So sorry for your loss!🤧

[Goin Breakdown]

13 hours ago, RussellDopeland said:

Just lost my cat recently. You're losing your best friend when a pet passes. It creates a void, to say the least. So sorry for your loss!🤧

This is how I feel for sure. 

[Goin Breakdown]

I made this. Thought id do a little

tribute.

 

I do a little cartoon thing of me when I was a kid so this is 1980s me. He really did bring out the kid in me. Thanks for allowing me to process with you all. 

[John from Riverside]

Rainbow bridge man
 

Rainbow bridge

[BillsFan4]

On 5/16/2023 at 2:42 PM, Goin Breakdown said:

Did you rescue again?  I'm sure I will.....in time 

I am sorry for your loss. I have owned pets my entire life, so I have lost quite a few over the years and it is always very difficult. I still miss all of them to this day! They all have their own personalities and traits/characteristics that make them unique, so you can never fully replace them.

 

But my suggestion, and I don’t mean this to sound cold in any way, would be to go rescue another animal sooner than later. I know you can’t replace the cat that was lost. But it really does help fill that void they leave in your life. That’s what we did after we lost our previous 2 dogs and it was the best thing we did to help with the grief.

 

We lost 2 dogs within about 6 months of each other back about 10 years ago and when the 2nd one passed we swore we wouldn’t get another animal for a while. We had 3 dogs and we lost the first one. Then the youngest of the 3 got cancer. We had his front leg amputated but the cancer spread anyway and he only made it about a year after the surgery. Then our oldest of the 3 had to be put down due to health issues from old age. So it was a lot in a few year span. We thought we needed time to grieve. Well, we made it about 2 weeks and the house just felt so empty that we decided we would at least just go look at the SPCA. We had no intentions of actually adopting a dog that day but then we fell in love with a dog there and brought him home shortly after that. It didn’t replace the dogs we lost but it sure helped fill that void in our hearts. It gave us something new to focus on too. Just having that new dog to take care of, who has his own cute little mannerisms and stuff. It’s amazing how quickly you fall in love with these animals. 

[billsfanmiamioh]

21 hours ago, BarleyNY said:

I’m very sorry for your loss. Pets are part of the family. My corgis turned 2 today. Not looking forward to that day 10 or 15 years from now. 

Close friends are having to put down their corgi today due to kidney failure. Poor buddy was only 6 😥

[boater]

You have my condolences and I can relate.

 

I had to put my beautiful brindle, sensitive, Grey Hound down after the Christmas blizzard. He lost control over his hind end. In December I had to put doggie diapers on him, and carry him around the house. After I dug out from the blizzard I carried him into the Emergency veterinarian. The Doc suspected cancer and the decision was made to put him down, for quality of life reasons. He was only 11.

 

In addition to grieving, I second guess my handling of the whole affair. Did I handle the early phase of his illness right (I did take him in Thanksgiving)?Should I have put him down, or should I have sought a second opinion... did I do it right? I think about it all the time.

[BarleyNY]

1 hour ago, billsfanmiamioh said:

Close friends are having to put down their corgi today due to kidney failure. Poor buddy was only 6 😥

That’s heartbreaking. Way too young. We had to put our last dog down at 6. Diabetes and Cushing’s Disease. 

[MarkyMannn]

3 hours ago, BarleyNY said:

That’s heartbreaking. Way too young. We had to put our last dog down at 6. Diabetes and Cushing’s Disease. 

See my post on pg2. Cushings took my dog at 8, a rat terrier common to live to 15 or more. I believe in hindsight he had it 18 months before diagnosis, died 8 months later. 

[BarleyNY]

1 minute ago, MarkyMannn said:

See my post on pg2. Cushings took my dog at 8, a rat terrier common to live to 15 or more. I believe in hindsight he had it 18 months before diagnosis, died 8 months later. 

 

Thar sucks. I’m sorry. There’s usually not much that can be done about Cushing’s in dogs. They go quick. 

[Goin Breakdown]

5 hours ago, boater said:

You have my condolences and I can relate.

 

I had to put my beautiful brindle, sensitive, Grey Hound down after the Christmas blizzard. He lost control over his hind end. In December I had to put doggie diapers on him, and carry him around the house. After I dug out from the blizzard I carried him into the Emergency veterinarian. The Doc suspected cancer and the decision was made to put him down, for quality of life reasons. He was only 11.

 

In addition to grieving, I second guess my handling of the whole affair. Did I handle the early phase of his illness right (I did take him in Thanksgiving)?Should I have put him down, or should I have sought a second opinion... did I do it right? I think about it all the time.

I'm sorry for your loss. I can't sleep right now because I'm having all these questions too. For us it was an accident. It involves my son and not to get into a ton of detail, but I just have a ton of questions for him, but I don't want to ask because I don't want him to have guilt out on top of the pain he's already processing for himself. I wonder what might have going through my cats mind, do cats have those kind of thoughts? Was he feeling betrayed or unprotected by us?  It's killing me to think all of this stuff. I have been reading a lot to find out how cognizant is a cat. I just want this to go away and go back to before it happened.   

[Saxum]

7 hours ago, Goin Breakdown said:

I'm sorry for your loss. I can't sleep right now because I'm having all these questions too. For us it was an accident. It involves my son and not to get into a ton of detail, but I just have a ton of questions for him, but I don't want to ask because I don't want him to have guilt out on top of the pain he's already processing for himself. I wonder what might have going through my cats mind, do cats have those kind of thoughts? Was he feeling betrayed or unprotected by us?  It's killing me to think all of this stuff. I have been reading a lot to find out how cognizant is a cat. I just want this to go away and go back to before it happened.   

 

I understand how you feel.  We put our birds in their outdoor cage during day during summer because they were happy and loved singing to other birds who would go to deck to feed off my wife's plants.  Cage was well protected and even if a feral cat came or a bird of prey saw them they could not reach my birds.  I have never seen a snake in this area and could not foresee one it coming into yard, onto deck and slip into each of the cages and eating my birds.  On-On as I told earlier in thread had been found by my dog 20 years earlier and 4 of my beautiful hand raised lovebirds who would stand on my fingers and eat out of my palm (one bird per finger) were gone.  

[MarkyMannn]

Right now I'm in Myrtle Beach for 2023 Bike Week. Yesterday went to a bar restaurant named Dead Dog Saloon. Hundreds of pictures on the walls of dogs that passed, given by customers. Hence the name. Great place, if just a bit sad too