Hard Decisions

I don't know what it is about this last year, but we have had so many unexpected decisions and random surprises. Not all have been good or fun. It seems to never end. Yesterday we made the hardest decision we feel like we've had to make so far. (well besides moving here) Yesterday we finally decided to let our Greta girl go. So here's your warning, if you don't want to cry, you can stop reading now. Maybe you won't, but I'm already bawling. Ha. It's pretty detailed. I know most people probably don't or wouldn't care to read a post about our dog, but I don't care. I'm doing one anyways.

About a month after we moved here Greta started to have some nasal issues. When we got her into the vet they gave us an antibiotic and told us she had a sinus infection. When that didn't clear up, we didn't have money to take her back in for a bit, so we just rode out her runny nose the best we could. Who knows, maybe if we would have had the money to catch it earlier, she would have had different results. When her nose started bleeding instead of just runny boogers, we arranged some stuff to take her in. We found out she had a really rare fungal infection in her nose. The vet thinks she randomly came into direct contact with it outside somewhere on grass or weeds. It can sometimes go into the eye cavity and up in the brain, or down into the body and lungs. Hers was just in her nose and so we were really lucky. We put her on stronger antibiotics and a fungal medicine. As soon as we put her on the meds she stopped eating and we couldn't get her to eat. It was a battle for a week. She lost 15 pounds, but her gums were still red so she was okay. We took her off the fungal med for a bit to get her eating. It worked.

She was still bleeding and it was everywhere all the time. Sad and gross but true. She then started doing these spasm sneezes where she'd shake and splatter blood everywhere. So hard to deal with. Once we finally put her back on the fungal meds it stopped bleeding. This was good. The vet was positive. Then about a week ago her eye was stuck looking out, and it was puffy and swollen shut. The vet wasn't so positive this time. He told us it was spreading instead of healing like we thought. When I read about it online it said it's bad when it goes into the eyes. The vet told us go to a specialist for a scraping surgery to try to clean it out in Vegas, or put her down. We had her info sent over to the specialist. We felt we needed to at least look into it for her. Then her eye swelling went down and we thought maybe we caught a break, until she started collapsing all the time everywhere. Her body was just giving out. She was so weak it just couldn't support her. We had been praying so long for her to be healed. We finally decided to pray about letting her go which felt right to us both right away. Maybe some of your think we are crazy for dragging it out as long as we did, but we love this dog and felt like we owed it to her to try everything we could to help her. In the end, we just couldn't so we made the decision to let her go yesterday. It was hard. If she would have gone on her own that would have been different, but choosing it for her was hard for us. Especially since we would see signs that made us think she might get better, or that she was good. In the end, the bad stuff and the suffering just got worse. Not fair in such a great girl so young. We were looking forward to her growing up with our kids.

Explaining things to Gabe was one of our biggest worries. Our talk seemed to go well until we made it clear you can't come home from heaven. Once you're there, you stay there. She then caught on and cried, and I cried, and we cried a few times a few days. I am happy to report she is doing better. She still asks lots of questions about where she is and what she is doing. She asked Adam if he had taken her up to heaven, which was cute.

We all tried to spend what time with her that we could before Tuesday. She was cuddled, and fed, and Adam took her hiking, which she struggled with a little but loved.




We still are in habit and will be for a while looking for her. Adam looks for her when coming home, and she's not waiting at the door for him anymore. Ollie walks around asking for Geh Geh trying to find her. Gabe wants to know who she can play with now. Greta isn't there to chase Gabe around the house, chase the light, play hide and seek, let Gabe dress her up, be Gabe's partner when she pretends to be a dog, or let Gabe lead her around on her lease. She won't be following us around from room to room making sure we are all good and accounted for, cuddling us any chance she gets. She's not here to get excited when she hears us grab her collar and lease, or here to try to sneak into the car for a ride. She won't be mountain biking,camping, or hiking with us again. She won't be here to constantly lick all of your faces, or to play with any of her favorite dog and human friends. She wont get to get wrestled, tackled, or stepped on by Ollie. Adam won't get to get her all riled up, barking, and running around all hyper. I won't get to lecture her to stop sneaking up on our bed and couch to sleep. :) We are sad. It is sad. We probably won't have another dog for a while. The only good thing from this is that where she is now she is happy and healthy. That makes us all really happy and grateful, even Gabe. We love you Greta girl. Thanks for being such a wonderful companion, friend, and family member.