Hopefully pet owners understand (Dedicated to pets) ??

Golden Retrievers a plenty -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-44898115

Well today is going to suck. We have the vet booked to come over for Raven later this afternoon...🙁

So sorry it's come to this, I will hold a special thought for you and your wife today.

Somehow does not seem right to post this after such sad news regarding Raven, our thoughts are with you and yours.

On a lighter note my two rascals, what a pair 😀

So our girl is gone. She had basically stopped eating the last few days, and had very quickly gone downhill. She was so unsteady that when we took her outside for business, we had to carry her up and down the 3 stairs, and there were times when she would nearly fall over when walking. It was clear that she was not enjoying life anymore and that light in her eyes was missing. We had BLT's for lunch and even though she was clearly very sick, she enjoyed a strip of crispy bacon. Later just before the vet arrived, I gave her a final treat - part of a Tim Horton's old fashioned plain doughnut...



She enjoyed it very much. The vet arrived and she clearly knew something was up - immediately got up and trotted to another room! But we settled her down, and the vet and his assistant prepped her. She passed very peacefully and quickly, with both of us patting her and telling her how good she was, and how much we loved her. After we spent a few minutes alone with her, the vet took her away and we'll get the ashes in a while.

We let Remi decide for himself if he wanted to come into the room after she was gone, and he wasn't interested, but he certainly knew something significant was going on as he was pacing a fair bit. After the vet left he did go to the spot on the carpet where we had her on a blanket, and he sniffed around...he looked a little lost for the rest of the day as we all were. Today he seems better, and we took him for a nice long walk this morning. He is probably taking it better than we are.

I will say that when we lost our first dog, he was the only dog we had, and it was much tougher then - probably partly because it was our first, but having gone through this it was also because we went from having a dog to having a very quiet house. Keeping a routine helps everyone, and having Remi still here means we still feed him and walk him, and do all the dog related things we do. I think that has made this transition much easier in a lot of ways.

I know everyone says this about their dogs, but Raven truly was a special dog. She was very protective of Remi, but other than that (and wanting to eat all the local cats) she really never showed aggression. When we first adopted her she was quite shy, but after a while she was eager to go up to anyone she met for a pat, and if you came to the house she would be there to greet you and get in your face for a sniff if she could. She was the softest dog I've ever touched in my life, and she always smelled wonderful.

The toughest part of all this is knowing that what you are doing is the right thing, but also knowing that they really don't understand that...

Going through some older photos of her today, and I also have a few videos. This is a while ago obviously when she was quite a bit younger and still in top shape, and before we had Remi. In fact just looking at the file information it was shot 5 years ago yesterday, so 5 years before she passed.

I can't say she would "never hurt a fly" because she was known as the fly hunter in our house. I managed to catch her going after one in this video - sorry for the orientation, and since it was a bit shaky I stabilized it...


And yes I confirmed after I stoppet the filming that the fly didn't make it. 😀