Saying Goodbye

After I got the call from the vet about Axl, I didn't yet know what our plan would be. Adam was at school teaching, so he wasn't able to answer my phone call, I could only leave him a message trying to explain what the vet had told me about his condition.

Since I was making the decisions on my own at that point, and the vet had said they couldn't do anything more for Axl at the clinic than we could do at home, I decided to go pick him up from the vet and bring him home for the night so that Adam and I could discuss what we wanted to do.

I had Sutton with me and I had no idea how I was going to juggle him and getting a 75 lb lethargic dog into my car, but I just didn't want any help, I wanted to do this on my own.

So I headed to the vet.

I was about half a mile away when my phone rang. It was Adam.

He'd gotten my message. After talking a little more about what the vet had told me, he said what I'd already known but couldn't acknowledge.

"Gina, you know what we need to do."

I can't describe that moment.

Making the decision to end the life of someone you love with all your heart? How can I ever express that horrible horrible feeling to anyone who's never gone through it? It's more than I could bear.

Adam said that he thought it would be harder if I brought him home for one last night, and that maybe we just shouldn't see him again. It'd be easier that way.

So I pulled off the road onto a side street. I pulled my Jeep over and sobbed.

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

I went home.

Adam called again when I got home. He said that he had meetings at the end of the day that he could skip, so he was going to be able to get off early to go to the vet to finalize everything with Axl. He said he'd talked to his parents and they said they could watch Sutton if I wanted to go with him to say goodbye.

At first I thought there was no way I could be strong enough. But then I realized that this was a one time deal, and I might regret my decision if I didn't get to say goodbye to my sweet dog one last time. So I decided to go.

About an hour later, Adam got home, and his dad came by shortly after. We headed to the vet.

On the way, we discussed if there was anything else, any other options, any way out of this.

In our hearts, we knew there wasn't.

We got to the vet and they could tell by my face who we were and who we were coming to see.

They brought Axl into a room so we could have some time alone with him.

As they brought him to the room, they had to have a towel wrapped around him because he wasn't really able to control his bladder anymore.

Once we got into the room, I lost it.

My poor baby had no idea what was about to happen, or why he was in this strange place. He was just happy to see us.

He was very weak, so we made him lay down on the towel. We never saw him get up again.

He was shaking like he had been for several weeks, and we now believe that that was his reaction to the pain he was in.

But he was still the Axl we loved. His ears were up and he endured all our kissing and hugging and petting. I always had this thing I'd do with him where I'd run my finger down his forehead, in between his big brown eyes, and down his loooong Doberman nose. I did a bunch of that. Another thing that was "ours" was how I'd put my forehead against his and rub his ears. We did that too.

We kept telling him what a good boy he was and how he'd been such a great dog. We told him we loved him and that we were so sorry this had to happen.

After a bit, Adam reached into his pocket and pulled out a laser pointer.

For any of you who knew Axl, you know how he was crazy about chasing lights and shadows, and most of all...laser pointers. I love that Adam thought to bring that for him.

He couldn't get up from his towel, but his ears immediately perked up and he followed that light and snapped at it on the ground.

One of his favorite things. In one of his last moments.

The nurses came back in after a little while. One of them was crying right along with me. She told me how he was such a cool dog and how sorry she was. She told me that she'd tried so hard to get him to eat, she'd fed him by hand and even put the food in his mouth, but he just couldn't eat. The fact that she cared so much meant a lot to me. This wasn't her dog. She hadn't known him more than 24 hours and she was so sad.

We asked if it would be soon that they would put him to sleep. They said yes, they'd do it as soon as we left, they already had the medicine drawn up. We asked how it worked. They said it was just an overdose of anesthesia, and that he'd just go to sleep. They said they'd be telling him what a good boy he was the whole time so that that would be the last thing he'd hear.

We decided to leave right away since he was obviously hurting.

We gave him one last hug and got off the floor. He couldn't get up to come with us.

They asked if we wanted a lock of his hair. I said no, we'd just take his collar. So I unhooked his collar from his neck and held it as we left the clinic.

I wondered the whole way home if he was gone yet.

I told Adam that I felt bad about the last few weeks, how, when we hadn't realized the pain he was in, we'd told him to jump up on our bed, go up and down the stairs, even took him for a walk. Adam said we shouldn't feel bad, since those were the things he loved to do.

When we got home, we were greeted by Diesel, and I knelt down and let him sniff Axl's collar and told him that Axl wasn't coming home.

I'm so glad that we decided to go see our baby puppy one last time and that we got to bring him a little joy in the midst of his pain. I'm so glad that I got to hug his neck and stare into his eyes and say goodbye.