Rest in peace, my love.

Today we had to put my dog down. If you've ready my last life update, you will know that in December, after noticing rapid weight loss and loss of mobility and mental functioning, we took my dog to the vet and it was determined that she likely had a cancer that was consuming all of the muscles in her body, alongside canine dementia. She'd been a bit leaky for a while but yesterday evening my brother went to help her get up and she was bleeding from her back end. It continued to bleed intermittently overnight and into the next day. We called the vet and she went in at 3:00pm today. My dad and my brother took her to the vet and I couldn't go with them. My mom was downtown taking care of my nunnu so she couldn't go either. I feel bad that she didn't get to say goodbye but she said she took care of her this morning and made her peace with that.

She was almost 12 years old. She lived a long life for a collie, and she might not have been around so long if my family wasn't able to take such close and loving care of her when she started getting sicker.

All growing up I begged and begged for a dog. I read every book in my school's library about dogs and I badgered my parents for ages. Finally, summer after my fourth grade year, they said we could get a dog but they had to choose the breed. I grew up with her. I remember running circles on the first floor with her when she was an energetic puppy and playing tug-of-war with her favourite chew toy and teasing her by tickling her face and paws. When I had sleepovers, she's come in and lye down on everyone's sleeping bags, and later when we got air mattresses she'd try to climb up on those too. One of her favourite places to sleep was tangled up in the vertical blinds in the kitchen. She chewed them up when she was a puppy, and broke so many in her sleep that we had to buy a new set. Then she broke a bunch of those ones, too. They're still up in the kitchen, bottoms reattached with packing tape. Her version of kisses was sticking her nose right in your face and sneezing. I woke up to that every day all the way through high school. Up into university, every summer when I've had to pack for camp she was right there helping me by lying down on top of all my things laid out on the floor.

I love her so much and the house feels empty now - the first floor at least, since she stopped being able to come up the stairs a while ago. Eventually she took to the front of the living room as her bedroom. Lying in front of that window was always one of her favourite spots, especially lying on the air vent for a cool breeze in summer and warmth in winter. That's where she was lying in the afternoon today, when I was petting her and giving her kisses while my dad and my brother were getting ready to leave. I stayed with her right up until she had to go. I watched my brother and my dad take her on her leash out to the car and lift her into the back for the last time.

I haven't posted a picture of her before but this is my sweet baby who I still called my baby right up until I said goodbye this morning, because fuck age, she's still my sweet little girl and always will be. This was taken in my backyard last October.

Rest in peace, my dear.