How? When?

How do you decide when to terminate a beloved pet's life?

Sometimes it's an easy answer if you think logically. But if you think emotionally, it's not quite so easy. You have so much time and love invested in your pet that to end its life on your command rather than its life being ended by natural means seems so arbitrary and harsh. Even with assurances from the vet that it's for the animal's good, how can one so blithely accept the final verdict?

I can't. I haven't. Neither of the two times so far that I've had to make that decision did I make it so lightly. I fought it emotionally.

I'm trying to convince myself now that I followed the right course. That Willie was suffering and was ready to go. I'm trying to convince myself that by his refusal to eat or drink water anymore, he was telling me that he had given up. I'm trying to convince myself that his difficulty in defecating that final time on Tuesday meant that his body was shutting down. I'm trying to convince myself that the doctors were right and it was the most humane thing to do. But I loved him so much it was too hard to let him go. I still tried to hang onto some little thread of hope that things would turn around at the last moment. But that was not to be.

Goodbye Willie. You'll always be my baby.