On Killing My Best Friend

Well, we decided not to wait another day. We were scheduled to put Foxie to sleep tomorrow afternoon, the afternoon of September 11, but we changed it this morning. We moved it up to this afternoon. The more we thought about it, the more selfish it seemed to keep her around for another day. While the doctor had assured us that she wasn’t feeling much pain, it seemed to us as though she might be.

I was up with her late last night. She couldn’t sleep. She just sat by my side of the bed, panting heavily and looking at me like I could do something about it. It was 3:30 AM when we went outside and walked around the yard. We talked and I cried some more.

There’s been a lot of crying these past few days. If I saw you in person, I wouldn’t probably admit that, but, with the web between us, it doesn’t embarrass me so much.

At any rate, we walked around and talked about stuff. I told her that she had cancer and that she was going to be put to sleep. I explaned about the cancer in her spleen and how the tumors were bursting, causing her to bleed internally. I told her that if there was a heaven, she should look for my uncle Thom and tell him that we said hello. Then we sat on the porch for an hour or so and I rubbed her belly, which was swollen with cancer and blood.

Today, I ended up leaving work early, spending another hour with her, walking her once more around the block. She got to sniff around a few of her favorite spots she even got to pee at one or two. Then we took her to the vet where she was put to sleep. She died at about 4:30. We were in the room whith her when they gave her the injection. It worked much more quickly than we had imagined and it seemed painless. The people working there handled it well. They left us alone with her for a while longer and we finished saying goodbye.

I could say a lot more, but I’m thinking now that I’ll save it for an article in the upcoming issue of Crimewave. Linette and are both thinking about writing articles about Foxie. Like I said yesterday, she was a great dog.

One last thing, and this is about my wife, Linette – I hope she and I are fortunate enough to have kids one day. She will make a wonderful mother. When I think about how good she was with Foxie these past few days and how she went out of her way to make her last days memorable (with hamburgers, bacon, tummy rubs and other things that dogs crave), I have little doubt that she would be a good mom. I didn’t doubt it before, it’s just that it became even more clear to me over the course of the past few days. I had a great dog and I’ve still got a great wife. For that, I’m fortunate.