“There is not much we can do for him. I think the best thing to do would be to put him down,” the vet says. The pain these words brought to me was unreal. I feel tears start to run down my face knowing my best friend would soon be gone. I started hugging him, not wanting to believe that I would never be able to pet his soft white/yellow fur again. I would never be able to come home and get greeted by him wagging his tail happily, so excited to see me. How can he go from being fine one day to not being able to walk or eat the next? The vet says she will give us however long we need to say our goodbyes. “How can I say goodbye to a dog I have had almost my whole life?” I think to myself. Then I look at him, and all I can see is the pain in his sweet brown eyes, and I know it's his time to go.
It all started with a walk on a Sunday afternoon in April. My dog, Sparky, and I were turning the corner around the neighborhood and his hips began to give out. He couldn’t walk more than two feet. I quickly turned around and tried taking him back home. It took what felt like an hour to get him back home because he could barely walk.
“Do you need help getting him back home?” I heard one of my neighbors say out of their door.
I hardly even heard my neighbor because all the questions ran through my mind. “What is going on with him? How can he go from perfectly fine in the house to not even being able to walk?” As soon as we got home, I texted my mom to let her know what was going on. Throughout the day, he got worse and didn’t want to move. The next few days, he progressively got worse. On Monday, he only ate a little bit of food and still did not want to move much. Then on Tuesday, he stopped eating completely; he wouldn't even eat his favorite treats. On Wednesday, he started throwing up anytime he drank water or anything.
Early Thursday morning, my mom and I got Sparky into the back of the car so we could head to the vet. We walked into the cold, small, square room with white walls and cabinets. To the right of me, there is a table with a computer, a stool, and a bench for my mom and I to sit on. Then, to the left of me, there is a foldable table on the wall so the vets can examine the animals. A lady walks into the room wearing blue scrub pants and a gray scrub top. She has a stethoscope around her neck and glasses on her head. I can see the look on her face change once she sees how rough he looks. She tells us he could have diabetes or something wrong with his kidneys, but they would need to do tests to figure it out. She also said he was too unstable to even run any tests on him. So she gave us two choices: “We can keep him for a few days and give him fluids or you can put him down.” This had to be the hardest decision of my life. I loved him so much that I didn’t want to just put him down, but seeing how much pain he was, it was the best decision.
As we left the vet's office, tears rushed down my face with his blue collar in my hand. I had just lost my best friend, and the only thing I had left of him was his collar. I took his collar and hung it from the rearview mirror of my car. I can now look at this every day and remember my best friend.