AIBU to keep beating myself up about this event
I am a 43 year old woman (no kids but one 12 year old nephew) and a very painful childhood memory has surfaced causing me much distress.
I'm keen to hear perspectives on 14 year children and their ability to assume responsibility and make decisions.
When I was 14 we had a large family dog. He had cancer. He was my mother’s pride and joy and she was determined to keep him alive with multiple tablets a day. It was 6 months past the date the vet had said he had left.
My parents were going through a divorce and my father was abroad working. My mother used the dog as leverage and booked a flight herself somewhere, telling my father that he had to be back by X date as the dog needed its medication.
My father is notoriously unreliable and arrived back 4 days late, by which time the dog hadn’t had its medication. I was at boarding school and firmly remember waking up in the middle of the night thinking ‘there’s something wrong with the dog.’ So the next day I phoned home and lied and said I had an extra weekend home I’d forgot to tell them about so could someone come and get me on the Friday, which was the day my mother was arriving back from her trip.
When I got to the house in the evening I could immediately see there was something wrong with the dog. My mother was in a foul mood, saying she had jet lag and screamed at my father for not coming back when he had said he would.
Suddenly the dog let out a gut piercing noise (of which I have never heard anything since that can chill you to the bone) and started projectile vomiting blood and toxic vomit and bashing his head against the wall.
I said ‘he needs to go to the vet' (it was maybe 8/9pm). To which she shrieked that it was all his (my father’s) fault and no one was touching her dog except her regular vet and we would go in the morning. She stormed upstairs, slammed the door closed and that was that.
The dog let out a series of screams and was vomiting everywhere and ramming his head. I knocked on the door of the tv room, where my father was, and said ‘we need to do something’ to which he closed the door and turned up the volume of the football. The dog tried to bolt in to the room and my father managed to push him out, shut the door and turned up the football volume.
The dog screamed again and was convulsing so I ran up the stairs and knocked on my mother’s door and said please could we do something. She said he was fine and could wait until tomorrow and closed the door on me. I was terrified of her and still feel guilty I wasn’t more forceful or demanding.
I ran back down stairs and the dog was ramming at the door so I opened it, having got bread and cakes thinking he might perk up with some food (Like he normally did). He bolted out of the house and up to the garden and was screaming, vomiting, writhing around the lawn in pain, at one point doing somersaults.
The only way I could get him to stop was to sit in a position where he could lean on me to take some of his weight, which I sit, sitting in a boggy part of the lawn, in the raining with freezing cold muddy water soaking through my underwear. He was quiet for a bit and it was really dark. I can’t remember how long we were out there (not long) but I thought we had better go back to the house as both parents would be looking for us.
I managed to corale him across the lawn (the stench was incredible) and get him back to the door and into the house but that tiled piece of floor that was gated off for him had nowhere for him to prop himself to stop the pain. My father had gone to bed. I felt angry that I thought they'd be concerned for us when both had continued to ignore the situation and gone to bed meaning we could have stayed outside longer where he was in less pain when leaning against me.
I sat with the dog for a short while on the cold floor but I was soaking wet and the stench of vomit and toxic blood was too much and I felt like an awful person that I didn’t stay the whole night with him but that I left him and went to bed. He roared in agony when I stood up but I couldn’t take the smell anymore and I feel ashamed about that. I feel I should have stayed with him longer or taken him back outside.
I went to bed, hoping it would make the night go faster and that the dog would be able to sleep. Then at 3am there was an earth shattering scream and we all ran down the stairs. My mother screamed at my father and still they wouldn’t take the dog to the 24/7 vet.
It got to 7 in the morning after several similar bouts and they were both up and called the vet. We had to carry the dog to the car because he was in so much pain and could barely move and again the smell was awful. He tried to stand up and collapsed.
We had to wait for the vet to arrive at the surgery at 9 and he put the dog down.
Back in the car my mother said that my father had killed her dog. My father jumped out of the car and ran into the vet’s to ask if there was anything that could have been done (the dog was already dead). Came out got back into the car and was like ‘he’s still alive’ because I guess you have muscle memory etc.
I’ve been waking up up in fits of sweats and shame over the years thinking ‘Why didn’t I think to call the 24/7 vet and get him to come out to us. Once he saw the dog there’s no way he would have left without giving him morphine or putting him down.’ Or ‘why didn’t I find some cushions for him to prop himself up so he wasn’t in so much pain instead of leaving him on the tiled floor with nothing to rest against to stop the pain' or ‘why wasn’t I more forceful with my parents instead of weakly suggesting we go to the vets.’
AIBU to beat myself up about this. I still can't get the images of him doing somersaults, shrieking in pain out of my head all these years later. I think having a 12 year old nephew has got me thinking about all this.
I still feel great shame and guilt and anger that my parents will never be held to account or will never acknowledge what they did (or didn't do). I once raised it with my mother who dismissed me saying it wasn’t true and the dog was fine and happy through the night.
For many years I never took painkillers when I needed them because I felt I didn’t deserve to, having caused this animal so much suffering through lack of action. The shame and guilt of that night haunts me, mostly thinking about what more I could have done e.g. spent the whole night with him on the floor.