To Sleep Perchance to Dream.

This is my little girl. She is 14 and today her dad and I planned the day she is going to die.

We have been on this rollercoaster with both of my dogs health being under a huge amount of question. And today was D-Day.

It started with Oscar.

We found out that my old man has bum cancer. It's a particular type of bum cancer that apparently neither the vet or oncologist have actually ever seen (although it has been documented). We had one of the tumors removed surgically but the results of the biopsy came back as malignant, aggressive and more than likely, to have spread. There are options but they are not great options and we decided today to let it be and watch and wait for signs. Making sure he never gets to a point where he is in pain.

Little girl has a fissure. A hole between her mouth and her sinuses. To fix it she would need all of her teeth out and massive palate surgery. They also suspect (as I have for a few years) that she has either had a stroke or a brain tumor. This causes her to have issues eating and because of these and the fissure combined she has what we call 'super sneezes' where her food and water go into a cavity and she sneezes it out. She can sneeze as often as every 30 minutes when she is awake. She is uncomfortable and she is past the place where fixing it is an option.

So today as we sat in the vets we talked about what the next few months will look like for Oscar. How to monitor his progression and what our options are.

For little girl, it was clearer. She is in pain. She is tired. And she deserves better.

So she will be on some meds for a bit so she can start feeling a bit more herself. We will treat her like the princess she is. And then, in just on two weeks, the vet will come home and we will smother her in kisses for the last time as she goes to sleep.

I do not really know how to process all of this. After 16/14 years of being a dog owner, by Christmas it looks like I won't be.

But let's be honest, I was never really a dog owner because they own me as much as I own them. They are my family, my fur babies, my first babies. And I will cry buckets and be proud they got to call me their mumma and try my best to do the best I can for them in spite of how hard it's all going to be.