Has anyone ever lost a pet?

[Don'tLiveonMoon]

My story is really rather sad so don't read if you are feeling upbeat.

My family has a history of dogs dying of random previously undetected diseases. It happens suddenly and they are usually sick for a long while. We also mainly had mutts so my parents decided that we should get a pure breed so that we would know where he came from and there would be no chance of a random disease out of nowhere.

Howie was a poodle (named for a character in the Celery Stalks at Midnight). We had him for about 5 years (we got him as a puppy). On my birthday, two years ago, he was acting strange. I was off from work but the rest of the family was not. He was all listless and I started freaking out and tried to get him to the vet and they wouldn't see me until 6:30. And the worst part was that the only vet who would see me at all is the vet that I hate because everytime we have ever been there it was to have a dog put down. The vet on the phone kept saying that Howie was just tired but I knew him and this was not like him.

Long story short, we take him the vet and they come out to us and say, "Would you like us to just put him down now? It's too late, you should have brought him earlier in the day." We are like "what the ****?" since all this just started that morning and no one understands what is going on. I still don't really understand it. All I know is that I went to work the next day and my mother (who stayed home with Howie) called me at lunch to tell me they had put him down. So within 24 hours, 24 hours which happened to be my birthday, my young dog died and no one has of yet given me a reason why.

I miss him so much every time I come home and there is no one to bark like a lunatic because he thinks I am a crook.....

That's so sad!!!!!!! My dog got sick really suddenly in September. When we took her to the vet it happened to be this vet we didn't know who looked at her and like the only assistant in the place who didn't know Sandy. So it was these two strangers, and they both seemed to just be in a hurry to get the appointment over with. I don't know. I was really annoyed with the way the appointment went, they basically ignored our concerns and said it was tapeworms, but it wasn't something that could have been reversed anyway, which we found out when we went to the emergency vet a few days later. It was really hard losing her, though. She was the only dog I'd ever had, and she was wonderful. :angel:
Erin

 

[Beebers]

Vets don't just put creatures down. There had to have been a condition justifying it. But your treatment by them sounds harsh. Just as with your people doctors, always ask questions when you have them. Make them communicate with you. It's your money, your life, your pets. You have to be your own best champion, and your pet's best champion. Take it by the horns, so to speak. And remember, the final decisions are yours, not theirs. They can only recommend. Second and third opinions should be gotten, as well.

I've had creatures great and small all of my life. With time you develop a keen sense of where they're at and what's right to do.

When FISH'N'WOLFE was five years old, there was a spectacular, prolonged ice storm. We had an endless back yard with trees all around the edges of it. He went out just to marvel at the storm in the dark. A tiny kitten voice was crying in the woods. She came to him, no bigger than a minute, just a little dab of fur and bones. Her fur was completely iced up. She adopted him.

Our vet looked her over and we found she was about three months old, had been starved, kicked in the face (her bottom teeth were ruined) and turned out to the winter to meet her fate. She was black and orange with long scraggy fur (never did have a good hairdo) and her face was black with an orange lightning streak zagging right down the middle. Kevin named her Susan, for black-eyed-susans which are orange and black. Not for her Susie or Sue. Susan, always.
She never really grew much. She'd have nothing to do with people other than Kevin for many years, he was it for her. Later on, after years of love, she learned to get cozy with a select few.
She was our magic cat. She could appear and disappear at will, one second she's gone, next she's there. She understood English fluently and was a fabulous brave hunter. Skinny and small as could be. A gymnast. One day she went out and had a liaison. She had four enormous, good-looking children who were all three times her size when they grew up. She was a wonderful mother.
She brooked no battle and won every critter fight she was ever in, despite being the size of a thimble. I've had countless cats and she was the smartest and bravest by far.
At twelve, she went suddenly down within days with cancer, and we did have her euthanized. Some creatures stand out in the pantheon; they're all special, but now and then there's one who has a little something extra. That was Susan. We still miss her, and that was summer before last.

 

[jediX]

I had a salamander for, hmm.. 7 years. I just died about a week before school started this year. I really miss it, for some reason.

What else... our dog died a few years back. She was almost totally blind and her legs didn't work (she was at least 15 human years old). She died in my Dad's arms....that was the third time in my entire life that I had seen my dad cry (I can only recall about 4 or 5 times when I've seen him cry).

I also had a tree frog, too, but it died quite a long time ago (it was named Milton, after the tree frog in "Song of the Cloud Forest" )

 

[Beebers]

Yes. I'm a strong grownup and have lost no end of pets and farm creatures but I sure did cry over Susan the Little Magic Cat.

Tree frogs, I love them so. We have areas here you drive to in the Spring, very few people know about them, and you stop and just listen to the most profound, overwhelming chorus of frogs of all sorts singing, it is indescribably beautiful.
We had a 14-month total drought almost two years ago and the frogs died away, we drove up to hear them and the silence was the saddest thing. But as creatures so amazingly do, they recouped and regrouped and are thriving again.

 

[jediX]

My cousin used to board her horse at a free range place for horses, and they had this creek that toads lived by. I remember going toad hunting and bringing home at least 50 of the lil guys.

 

[Don'tLiveonMoon]

I've always loved hunting for frogs and toads when we go crick-walking. They're a lot of fun, and so cute!
Erin

 

[Beebers]

In (the cellar) and around the big old house we had for many years in Massachusetts, toads were in abundance. They were our buddies and were doing just fine, they were ENORMOUS. Loved to be held, and petted. If they could purr, they would have.

 

[Zack the Dog]

Hey guys,

Well, it's been a year to this day, I can't beleave it, it some ways it feels like yesterday and other it feels like years ago. I'm kinda getting sad again, but i'm ok, I know the whole Disney/Muppet deal has been on my mind too. But in other news My brother is doing fine.

I was looking at the box of all of my dog Barney's stuff last night around the time my brother was biten, my cat was very interested in sniffing the stuff from Barney's cent. It was cute.

There is a chance that Barney was adopted in the fact that we were never billed for the injection and my stepdad clames he saw a dog that looked like Barney in a car at a gas station back in Dec, and the dog looked at him and barked. but mystep dad didn't ask the guy before he drove away. He said he was to sad to ask. I have hope that he was apdoted, he was still a young dog and with propore care he could be a great dog!

 

[leliebel]

aah that's nice

 

[RubberDucky]

There is a chance that Barney was adopted in the fact that we were never billed for the injection and my stepdad clames he saw a dog that looked like Barney in a car at a gas station back in Dec, and the dog looked at him and barked. but mystep dad didn't ask the guy before he drove away. QUOTE]

Wow! That's great, I really hope it was Barney yor stepdad saw. There is a bit of comfort in thinking that even though they aren't with us, they are somewhere being loved.
I had a similar situation actually. When I was 9 I got some baby ducks --cute, tiny and just hatched-- and since I was the first thing they saw, they imprinted on me and I was "mom." They followed me everywhere, they peeped like mad when I was gone at school....it was the most awesome pet experience I ever had! When they got older and sort of grew out of the whole following me thing, I took them to my grandpa's farm where they could live in his old chicken house and have a pond. I came out every Sunday to see them and re-fill the pool They lived there for several years happily (from what I can read of a duck's happiness), but then my grandpa's health began to slip. He began forgetting to shut them in their house at night. Every Sunday I'd return to find one or two more missing, and it was only afterward when grandpa's mental stae inmproved that he sorrowfully recollected that it was probably his fault for not putting them away in the evenings. Since none of the ducks had ever wandered from home before, I could only assume that something like a fox had been having gourmet dinners for several weeks...and that broke my heart. I don't think we ever cleaned out their house....the pool just sits there empty and the old feathers still lie there in the straw.
years later (I was 19 when I saw her), I went to my local zoo.......45 minutes away from the farm. I was feeding the goldfish at the duckpond and looked up to see what I think--and really hope to be-- one of my original babies! This little brown duck, pale with age, the only one of it's kind in a pond full of mallards and geese, staring at me with a cocked head as if to say "do I know you??" I spoke to her quietly and she just gave me this feel that she knew me, she followed me as I walked along the fence. I've never asked the zoo where they got her, for fear I'd find that she really isn't mine. I just go to the zoo now and again to see little old Plucky and feel better thinking that one of my babies is still well