The Intense Grief after Losing a Pet

[AheadOfTheCrib]

My 11 year old dog had to be PTS on Friday. He had difficulty walking for nearly 2 years, I had a mobility harness to help him the past 6 months. He got a pressure sore which got infected. We treated it for three weeks but no improvement, the skin around it started to die and was causing him so much pain.

My brain knows it was his time, and that I couldn't let him suffer anymore, but my heart regrets ever phoning the vet that day and I would do anything to have him back with me.

I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't focus on anything. I feel guilty about my decision to let him go, and I feel guilty if I do anything relatively normal like showering.

Will the pain ever ease? I miss him so much...

itsnotmeitsu

Thinking of you today,its so bloody hard to deal with, the day will come when you remember your pet with a smile instead of tears.
Take Care

We grieve deeply because we love deeply. As a PP said, both the love and the grief are very pure.

I'm so sorry. We put our utterly beloved greyhound to sleep 13 months ago and it was so traumatic. I had similar feelings to you. Why that day? What if we'd have hung on that bit longer? The one thing I read that helped me a bit was that the guilt is your brain basically trying to undo it and make it not true. This helped me look at it a bit more objectively and just go with the feeling until it sort of passed. I say sort of, I still miss him terribly and wish he were still here.

I lost my beautiful girl Belle on august 23rd. The grief is unbearable on days. I miss her so much. I loved our morning walks and would be out of bed at 6am everyday to take her out. I miss this more than anything, every day I look over to the corner of the sofa where she would be lay and feel such sadness.

I lost my old girl last Christmas and I'm still grieving her
I was so distraught when she died as it was at the overnight vet and I wasn't with her which broke my heart.
She was my first dog and my one and only as I can't imagine ever having another as #1 it's not her and # 2 it's too heart wrenching when they go
Be kind to yourself it's not your fault as you did what was best for him and not yourself which is what good dog owners do

Thank you so much @Thameslock , and so much sympathy with others on this thread. So much sadness, but how lucky are the pets that generate this amount of grief. My thoughts are with you all. I keep having to check myself that he's not there, and do smile when I remember he was an idiot.

@AheadOfTheCrib , I’m so very sorry for your loss.
It seems to me that you made your decision with love. Honestly I think you loved him so much you were brave. I’m not sure I could have been that brave and if I wasn’t it would all be about me and not my animal. You chose the pain you are now experiencing over a little more time with your pet. A bit more time of pain for your pet.
You know you did the best thing but grief is biting you. One day you will be able to look back when your pain is not so severe and remember your beautiful friend and smile. Xx

"I PROMISE AND SOLEMNLY DECLARE that I will pursue the work of my profession with integrity and accept my responsibilities to the public, my clients, the profession and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and that, ABOVE ALL, my constant endeavour will be to ensure the health and welfare of animals committed to my care."

That's what vets are supposed to do. Responsibilities to clients would include trying to be nice around the time of euthanasia but you will notice that the welfare of the pet comes above all, in big letters. As such, whether the animal is better off dead or not matters more to me than the knots the owner is tying themselves into* .

There is a big fashion for empathy nowadays and sympathy seems to be a dirty word, or at least inferior.

Empathy
"the ability to understand and share the feelings of another."
I do not understand the misdirected guilt some owners have over the decision to go ahead and euthanase an animal which is suffering or very soon will be, and I certainly do not share it.

Sympathy
feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune.
Well, it's usually not a misfortune as such but splitting hairs, whatever. I do feel pity for the owners - for the loss of the pet which is coming, decision or no decision; for the owner having to be the one to say yes, do it; and for the non useful bits of grief.

*in the OP's case, she didn't let the guilt get in the way of doing the right thing by the animal. I feel sympathy for clients like OP who unselfishly keep control of their own emotion long enough to put the animal first, and for owners whose non useful grief emotions are acting as blockers to euthanasia, but the latter scenario is pretty awful and seems to be a bit more common now.