Dear All,
 
We've just come back from the vets and I am fighting (and failing) to
hold my tears in.  I've had Eric for 3 and a half years, gave him a
forever home from the lady who had rescued him from a laboratory two
years before that.
 
Eric has Cushing's disease, fluid on his lungs, fluid on his heart, a
huge Pred belly and a heart murmer.  Today the vet found ulcers in his
eyes and has told me (as she has been for some time) that he really
hasn't much longer.  She wants to see him next Tuesday, probably to,
God, I can't even type it.
 
The thing is, if he was in pain or suffering, I could do this.  But apart
from sleeping most of the time, he still seems to have a real quality of
life.  We even went out for a walk the other day and although he spent a
lot of the time sleeping, the time he was on the ground and sniffing
through the woods, he really enjoyed.
 
So what do I do?  The vet says that their final hours are never pleasant,
(I was hoping he would die in his sleep you see) and that it would be
better to help him cross than to let nature take her course.  But I
really don't know.  I have always done EVERYTHING I can to keep another
life alive, even when it looks futile, I even kept a gerbil til the grand
age of 4 when I was a kid because when his teeth fell out, (mum and I
ground his food into a powder and added water to make a paste) the vet
had said it would be a kindness to let him go.  He lived another 2 happy
years after that.
 
Sorry to waffle on but I'm in bits here.
 
Luv Susan
 
--
 
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic
hallway where thieves and pimps run free,and good men die like dogs.
There's also a negative side." -Hunter S. Thompson-
[Posted in FML issue 5031]