Hi Sarah,

I have had a similar experience to yours within the last few days and understand how you were feeling. I haven’t posted on this forum before either and writing this reply is all part of many unpredictable changes happening to my life. I can see the same changes were happening to you and that you were reaching out to anyone , anywhere to get some relief or understanding which you needed,deserved and hopefully have now. Your post is now 3 years old and that some of us are still replying despite knowing youll never read our words, goes to show how horrendous and underestimated this grief can be. By writing this out I feel like I’m somehow sending out support to you that you can unknowingly use elsewhere. I also hope that people who come to this post in future read every reply as you have received some very wise, comforting advice from people who know. I have pulled sentences out of many of the replies which have helped me and I genuinely want to thank everyone who has posted here as you all got me out of bed today.

I’m hoping that a level of healing has now occurred for you which enables you to think, function and be happier. We will always carry the “what if’s”  or the ” I should have’s” to a degree, but they will definitely lessen and sometimes are even replaced altogether with a better understanding and thus , mental peace. Incase it helps at all, I genuinely believe you made the correct decision regarding not going through with the operation. I would never say that simply to be compassionate as that isn’t always helpful. You made the right call and any objective dog person will say the same. You were 28 at the time which means you may not have had to make these calls before and I hope you have factored this in to giving yourself a genuine break. Self forgiveness.

If you stumble across this thread again by chance it would be briliant if you could write a little about your experience with grief and how you’re going thesedays. It may help those people who are still coming to your post in utter despair whilst also giving closure to your post if that is something you want. People who like you, aren’t recovering within socially expected ‘normal’ time frames or who might be alone and have just lost their best mate. I hope we do hear from you:)

The death of a dog, cat, fish, rabbit, horse, rat, pig, lizard, bird, ferret or anything else termed as  “pet” is still widely underestimated in our culture. The grief is real and we need to talk about it because it’s normal.

If you’ve just found this thread and are feeling the unexpected sickness and aloneness of pure grief, I wisely urge you to read all 23 replies here. Take home the one or two sentences that will distill some of your pain for this morning, today or even just the next few minutes. Try as best as you can to be pro-active in the grief process by learning about these bizarre emotions and thoughts. By articulating emotions you can then validate them and know that it’s all normal. I thought I was the only person in the world who didn’t want to go back to my house, drive past the park or even get back in the car where my great friend sat next to me on every drive. But I’m not and there’s healing in that.

I could type forever at this point so I’ll stop here and just thank everyone again for your posts which have given me some respite today.