Hi there,
I just found this site today. This will be quite along post, but I feel it is important for me to write as I'm sure it will help me. I lost my wonderful little Yorkshire Terrier, Timmy in October 2008. It will be 8 months soon since he went away and I still talk to him everyday and think of him all the time. He left us just under 3 weeks before his 16th birthday.
I've been crying alot this past few weeks about him. I am pregnant and think my hormones are playing a part with that too. We have been trying for a baby for almost 5 years and our only option was ICSI/IVF and we got pregnant after our 2nd attempt in Feb/March this year.
I was also very unhappy in my job which was causing me alot of stress and ill health and I had the courage to leave the job last year and train to do something else. I passed my course with flying colours in February this year.
I remember my brother saying to me that day, before we had to take Timmy to the vets for the last time, that he was ready to go because he had helped me and been with me for many years, and now I was getting stronger and things were going to work out for me. He felt that Timmy knew and saw this and decided to leave.
He was so poorly. I saw him deteriorate over his last year. He had had cataracts for a number of years and had become deaf in his final 2 years and could only hear me if I shouted to him or sent my younger Yorkie to tell him to come.
He had this enormous stomach and wanted to eat all the time in his last year. He had lost all but 2 teeth over the years but in the past year, we had to feed him and he had lost power in his jaws, so the food used to fall out of his mouth. The vet had said his stomach was probably tumour and since it was there for quite a while, he wouldn't operate and we had to monitor him. He also had a heart murmur for a number of years.
Even despite his frailty, he didn't soil in the house often until his last week.
In his final week, I remember being up all night as he was vomiting and having diarrhoea constantly. It was everywhere and he kept collapsing. I called in sick to work as I feared the worst and took him straight to the vet first thing on the Saturday morning. The vet said it was probably due to this mass in his abdomen and gave him antibiotics, rehydration and medicine for his stomach and nausea and diarrhoea. I fed him fluids every hour and willed him to take them and he did. He kept asking to go outside and when he did, he just lay shivering on the grass in the pouring rain. That night he rallied a bit and ate a small piece of chicken. Next day I went to work and when I got home, my husband said he was not too bad but had slept alot. He was quite confused and could see even less than before and tried to take a drink from one of my husband's slippers.
That evening, my Mum came round and I was making dinner and he vomited again and collapsed. His tongue went blue and he was really vague so we took him straight to the emergency vet where she seemed unconcerned and gave him afew injections. He rallied again for afew hours, ate a small amount and wanted to play a bit. The next day, he was subdued again. Our own vet wanted to seem him that Monday night and as I was working, my husband took him. The vet told him that if he didn't improve, then it was time. He gave him more meds and sent him home.
The following 2 days, he was quiet but had gone himself to get a drink, still wouldn't eat very much but the vomiting had stopped and he seemed ok. That Wednesday night, we went back to see the vet as planned and he gave me meds for his heart murmur and said to me just to watch how he was. I got the impression that he didn't have much hope but I think he knew what Timmy meant to me and so wasn't up front with it.
Thursday he wasn't so good and I blamed it on these new meds and called the vet, who said he thought that he was just deteriorating and if he got worse, bring him back.
Friday he was no better, he would hardly drink and he ate very little.
On the Saturday, I was at work again and my husband said he was no different until the evening where he refused to eat even a bit of his favourite minced beef and my husband said he knew things weren't good.
That night when I went to bed, Timmy was sitting at my bedside when I went into the room, just staring at the wall. I picked him up and cuddled him and I cried, I knew it was time and that we had done everything we could for him.
The worst thing was when I had just drifted off to sleep and I heard Timmy crying. He slept in our room and I could hear him pacing about, whimpering. I lifted him onto the bed and held him but he didn't want it.
I got up and went through to the lounge with him and tried to hold him again but he just wanted down and kept crying. I know it wouldn't have normally been the right thing to do but I gave him a quarter dose of Paracetamol and he seemed to settle. At 11am the next day, he still lay in the same position that he had settled in..........I phoned the vets. I also called my Mum, Dad and brother and other close family. My Mum and brother came over and he just lay in their arms as they said goodbye to him.
We then took him to the vets and I signed the papers. I held him in my arms when he died and felt him leaving, at peace.
I still beat myself up over having him put to sleep but it was the only thing I could do, the last act of kindness and love that I could show him. At times I think that I should have held on one more day to see but I couldn't do that to him.
We took him to my Dad's house in the countryside to bury him, where our other childhood pets are and we bought a statue to sit on his grave.
I took alot of comfort from the Rainbow Bridge poem, my heart was broken.
Afew days after, my husband drove past my Dad's house and the end of the biggest, brightest rainbow seemed to be at the back of the garden, where Timmy is.
On days like today, where the weather is sunny, or at Christmas, I miss him when I remember all the nice things we used to do with Timmy on those days.
I have a younger Yorkie called Alfie who is 3 years old. He has copied alot of Timmy's mannerisms and makes us laugh and yet he is unique in his own way, just like Timmy was.
We grew up together and shared many hard and good times and he helped me get through those. I shall never forget him and he will always have a place in my heart,x
