When it's time to say goodbye

It’s never an easy decision to make, but there’s peace to be had in remembering the good times, says Solider Palmer

- Solider Palmer

I bought a black labrador puppy in 2010. Having grown up in a house full of dogs, I knew what to expect from a four-legged friend, but this was the first dog that ever truly belonged to me. She gave me endless fun for all of 13 years, and she passed away a little more than a fortnight ago. I’m still struggling to make sense of her absence.

In her declining years, she faded back from the day-to-day reality of my working life. She preferred to be left at home, and she would often choose to lie in a patch of sun beneath my office window. Bit by bit, she quietly became less of an active participant, and I learned to accommodate the changes as she slowed down.

Her muzzle went white, and her belly turned a silvery grey soon afterwards. She became a matriarch figure in the house, and she enjoyed supervising my young son when he was learning to crawl on all fours behind her. As he grew up and became a toddler, she learned to tolerate her ears being pulled without the slightest growl or display of ill-temper. She would stare at me with a long-suffering expression as he scrambled all over her, but she was very clearly devoted to the boy.

The vet’s diagnosis was damning and final. There was no escape from the cancers inside her, so she was put on a course of drugs to make her comfortable. That lasted for a few months, and I must confess that I got used to that interim period. She seemed fine in herself, and whatever the cause of her decline, I felt like she had reached a kind of equilibrium. So having been shocked by the terrible diagnosis, I was surprised again by the realisation that any thought of salvation or normality was only an illusion. It all happened quite suddenly in the end. As if from nowhere, she was struggling to walk and had lost interest in her food.