It seems so unfair.  Our family had two dogs as I grew up.  Cassidy was the old, larger mutt.  Tocina was the younger, smaller pug.  When Cassidy passed in November, it wasn’t exactly a surprise.  She had survived the cancer far longer than we could have expected.  The hardest part was her quick deterioration.  I was 1,300 miles away when I got the news.  I never got to say goodbye.  That was the hardest part.  I never remembered to cry.  I didn’t cry for her until yesterday–when everything was unleashed.

Tocina was never exactly healthy.  She was allergic to so much that we had to make her food out of a strange mixture of oatmeal and turkey.  It did her well, but we still had to keep her on steroids her entire life.  Considering I will only be gone for 27 months and Tocina is 8 years old, I expected she might still be alive when I get back.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  A few months ago, Tocina desperately needed her nails clipped.  It was impossible to hold her down.  The vet put her under anesthesia to clip them.  When she came out of it, she suffered a stroke.  She suffered a second stroke a few months later.

My little Tocina has not been the same since then.  Then, last week, something started happening.  It was a small shake, like she was suffering from Parkinson’s   It would only last for a few seconds.  But, as the days carried on, it only got worse.  Yesterday, it was quite violent and lasted for 10-20 minutes at a time.  She was losing control of her bowels and we were finding blood.  Despite her youth, we knew it was time.  At the vet, my mom held her as they gave her the relaxing shot.  A few minutes later, she was a dead weight.  My mom couldn’t hold her up, so we put her on my lap.  I put one hand on her head and the other under her–so I could feel her heart.  It was relaxed.  Then they gave her the shot.  Her heart gave a single beat….then stopped.

Tocina