Had to put our girl to rest yesterday

Easily one of the toughest days of our lives, but I found posts like this help me tremendously with navigating this process and hope I can do the same for others

Our sweet girl Shadow was around 13 - two days ago she started vomiting constantly, had a very distended abdomen and looked immensely uncomfortable. She has a narrow escape from GDV 3.5 years ago (where we chose to have the surgery and gastropexy for around $7,000) so these signs immediately alarmed us. We rushed her to the nearest animal urgent care center. Unfortunately, we’re traveling and aren’t near an area with more speciality veterinary care. The veterinary staff kept her overnight and tried to address the bloating. It didn’t turn out to be GDV of her stomach (as her gastropexy was intact) but they called me late at night and said they were really concerned by radiographs showing considerable ileus and intestinal torsion. We paid to have the radiographs sent out to be interpreted by a speciality radiologist and they were also stumped by the intestinal torsion. Our option was basically to have exploratory surgery which besides being risky at her age, didn’t have any guarantee of what they’d find / what they can fix. It was very possible that they’d find advanced stage disease or necrotic tissue, which would basically result in euthanizing her during the surgery. We made the incredibly gut wrenching decision to put her to rest and not subject her to this surgery given the risk probability. It was so damn hard to come to that and I was so desperate to save her. The nearest speciality veterinary centers were a 2 hour drive and I was concerned about transporting her in an ambulatory state.

So yesterday morning we went to the hospital and spent some time with her saying our final goodbyes. It was absolutely heartbreaking. She was happy to see us and seemed mentally cogent but her abdomen was still so distended and she was clearly in severe pain. It was unbelievably hard to keep our composure, but we tried our best to not stress her. The process was very smooth and peaceful. They first administered propofol which made her quickly fall asleep, followed by the euthanasia medicine. It worked really quickly and just looked like she was sleeping. It was one of the hardest things I’ve seen in my life to see the light fade from her eyes. Despite the intense amount of pain and suffering she was clearly enduring, she was very happy to see us. I feel so guilty that her last day on earth was spent in a hospital, but at the same time we tried so hard to help her.

I’d be lying if I said our journey with her was an easy one - it was fraught with its challenges. When we adopted her, she had quite a few behavioral issues. After her GDV she slowly but surely had worsening health issues. Over the last year her mobility started to decline dramatically, and it was so tough to see her struggle to do the things that she loved all her life. But I’m glad and proud of the life that we worked so hard to give her, one that many others probably would have given up on (and I certainly thought of that)

Rest in peace Shadow, we’ll love and remember you forever.