Letting Her Go

We rescued Mach1e in December of 2002. She was an integral part of our family and our lives. My daughter had never known a life without our beloved dog in it. Fourteen years after her “gotcha” day she was having trouble walking and no longer had bowel and bladder control. No problem, we put her in diapers as that year we took in my mother-in-law’s Maltese, Mattie, after she got sick and eventually passed away. Mattie was never properly housebroken due to circumstances in my mother-in-law’s life, and was in diapers, so what was one more dog? Then two years after that, Mach1e was not moving at all and we quickly realized that she completely lost the use of her back legs. We went on like this for two months, carrying her wherever she needed to go, eventually bringing her food and letting her rest on the pillow she slept on. Then the bedsores came that wouldn’t heal. Finally, I made that difficult call to our vet, “It’s time to let her go.”