Pet loss and self-forgiveness
I am so, so sorry that this horrible tragedy happened. I agree with the vets, I don’t think that you had anything to do with this. Sometimes little dogs can just have an irregular heartbeat that can happen at any time and that can happen from excitement or anything… And they can just suddenly die. I think you just happens to be there when this happened, and it was just a bad coincident that her head was bumped just before that. I know you’re not going to believe that because you’re feeling so guilty but these kinds of things absolutely do happen. You’re obviously an incredibly loving person, and I understand being afraid of ever wanting to take care of another dog, but perhaps you can volunteer at a shelter because you have a lot of love to give!

Pet loss and self-forgiveness
I am so sorry for your losses! Please forgive yourself, give those beautiful puppies a wonderful life! The last pup would’ve been very lonely as an only dog after being in a large pack, he/she was spared that, and you do have to be able to have enough money to take care of yourself, if you had not made that decision you would not have been able to take care of yourself or the last dog anyway! i’m so sorry that you were in that position, that is so painful. I wonder if some point you will be able to spend some time maybe volunteering at a local shelter? I wish you peace and good memories.

Pet loss and self-forgiveness
I am so sorry that you feel horrible guilt. To be honest, I don’t think you made mistakes. Definitely had your babies best interest in mind and did not put him through the pain of blood testing or risk of anesthesia. It sounds like the steroid treatment was working well, although a side effect can be loss of muscle mass (sometimes there is just no ideal choice, and relieving the cough was more important than preserving muscle I’m sure for your baby). The liver issue was probably unrelated, many elderly dogs developed liver problems. You have to remember that you did all the best choices with the information that you had at the time. You were also able to relieve your baby’s cough, which I’m sure was distressing to him. You probably gave him a longer life and better quality life. I hope you can find peace at some point.

“Who am I now?” Loss of identity after pet bereavement
Thank you for this article. I lost my soul girl on July 21, 5 1/2 weeks ago, after a very rough year and a half with new onset epilepsy and severe respiratory compromise frequently after her seizure clusters. We thought we had fairly good control But in retrospect we really did not, and on her last day we had every hope that she was going to turn around and improve. She had had five seizures and needed to be on oxygen, but this has happened before with good result, she was starting to improve and then suddenly
Develop severe respiratory compromise with apparently a combination of different problems including aspiration pneumonia and noncardiogenic pulmonary edema. We are heartbroken because we could not be there with her at the end, she took a sudden turn for the worse and we were a half an hour away and did not want to put her through the suffering of feeling like she was suffocating while waiting for us to get to her. This was very Trumatic for me, knowing that she had a terrible last day and that I could not be there. Our whole identities really had revolved around giving her love and care and 24 hour a day supervision for the past year and a half, she had just turned eight a few weeks before she died, and we had expected her to live to be much older, her Pomeranian stepbrother is 18, we thought we would at least have her until she was maybe 12 or 14, never thought she would die so young. I am also struggling with extreme guilt, because in hindsight there are decisions I would’ve made differently that might have given us more time with her, maybe another year if I had pushed her neurologist to increase her seizure medication after a severe cluster in May and another seizure in June. Before she died I felt like I was a very happy person, we had stress but life just started to go in a good direction in many areas, and now I feel like I’m a completely different person, an unhappy one, I don’t care about anything, I take no joy or pleasure and anything anymore. I know she would not want this. I have to find a way to create and embrace a new identity without her physical presence, but I don’t even want to really do that, this is terrible agony for me. I’m starting to get counseling so that I can try to figure out how to integrate this loss of her physical presence, honor who she was, which was an incredibly caring and giving little soul, and figure out how to use what she gave us to try to help others and make the world a better place. I don’t really see any other point in life right now and I’m going to try to focus on that.