Home life is definitely more settled since we gulped, booked our little Chloe in for a lethal injection and eventually went through a rough few days of tears, usually coming out of nowhere at all. I don’t think I was in total denial about the deterioration in her condition, but once the two week countdown had begun, I kept finding reasons why it was too soon to put her down. The last couple of days were complete shockers and I knew it was the right time, and yet even then I was unable to be in the room to face my decision. Poor old Kim took the fall for me that day.
It didn’t take long to feel the burden of her longstanding difficult condition start to lift from my shoulders. The first day I took Fergus out afterwards was an exercise in exhilaration and catharsis for both man and animal; we power-walked distant territory long unavailable to us due to Chloe’s limited speed and range. It was just fantastic. Now we have other issues, like what do we do with the second half of the dog food can, or will he handle a new dog well (or teach it how to lunge at other canines) or even, do we bother with another dog at all? Getting daily PetRescue new-dog alerts is not helping. We’ll see.