LOVE IS BLIND

For anyone who subscribes to this blog you’ll remember back in May of last year we celebrated Miles’ perfect day.  Well on February 27th we had to say goodbye to my dear sweet boy, easily making it my worst day. The grief is still immense for me right now so it’s hard to know what to write.  But the point of this blog was to share the things that we have experienced and learned along the journey of adopting three incredibly lovable, sweet, giving and uniquely broken dogs and forming a happy little pack.  

My big beautiful boy….there will never be another one like you!  I love you so much buddy.

So this inevitable lesson will be shared in a couple segments as I figure out what all to write. End of life decisions are something we all have to deal with at some point in time.  When it’s someone we love dearly those decisions are filled with a broad spectrum of emotion, uncertainty, fear and doubt.  In the case of Miles it was all of those and more.  We made the decision we thought was best for him at the time and I still believe it was the right one.  That being said everyday since has been filled with second guessing, regret, soul searching and just flat out sadness.  Sadness not just for me but also for Heather and Marley for sure, Morgan maybe not as much.

One of the challenges with end of life decisions is we don’t get to pick the timing of them. For Miles the end came on rather quickly which took me by surprise. Intellectually I have understood for a while that a 13 year old lab is essentially living on borrowed time.  But my emotional self blocked or pushed that reality aside, Miles was our miracle boy.  The sheer number of things he faced and survived still amazes me, and deep down I never wanted him to leave. To understand what I mean here is a list of some of his challenges:

• completely blind by the time he was (5 approximately)
• stray wandering the streets in Georgia, taken to a shelter and unclaimed and not adopted his time was running out
• rescued through the generosity of volunteers and the support of Safe Harbor Lab Rescue driven to Colorado
• attacked by his sister Morgan over a ball, a chunk of his ear was taken out
• survived bloat sugery or gastric dilatation-volvulus (GDV) to be technical
• had cataracts which then led to glaucoma
• spinal stenosis
• a heart murmur that lead to arrhythmias and progressing heart disease
• Lar Par or laryngeal paralysis 

More to come in the next post.

Trying to comfort my boy after a long night in the ER in what was his most hated situation, the car.

This is how a lot of our last 4 days together were spent shuttling back and forth to different doctors. Eventhough he hated the car he always, always had a smile on his face.

So many wonderful caregivers had a hand in Miles final days and for that I’ll always be thankful.