AngelIt's been a week and I've been debating whether I should even post this or not.
Our dog died suddenly sometime during the night on October 1st.
Now, if you're not a dog person, or if your dog lives outside on a chain or under your porch and you don't really notice when it's gone, then you don't understand and you can stop reading right now.
But if you are a dog person, if your dog has a bed and it's own toys and sits at your feet when you're at the dinner table then you get it.
Angel was my wife's dog. That's not how we intended it to be, but it just kind of happened. That dog followed her everywhere, even to the bathroom. Oh, she played with the kids too, and even me sometimes, but Anna was Angel's "alpha" and by far her master.
We don't really know what happened. Angel was 8 years old, so not super old, but she got pregnant. We can debate the benefits of spaying later, but it was getting close to the time for the puppies. Not super close, we figured we had a couple of weeks. But Angel had taken to hiding under the bed and not coming out even if called.
The night it happened we had to move the matress to get her out. She couldn't, or wouldn't, walk. We set her by her food dishes, and tried to call the vet. Being the weekend, though, we didn't get a response and thought we'd be ok until Monday.
The best we can figure is that the puppies were getting too big too fast. While we won't ever know for sure, we think one of them shifted and pushed too hard against her heart and lungs.
We had her cremated and placed in a keepsake box. We haven't quite decided what to do with it.
Everyone is still kind of in shock. The kids are all reacting in different ways. We keep saying we should do a funeral or something, just for closure, but we're not sure how to go about it.
