isaiahsixtyone:3: Ignorance is Bliss

For those who don't know, we lost our beloved Jack on Monday. It went down in a sad way, so if you're eating or are easily grossed out, maybe don't read this.....

Late Sunday night (or I guess, early Monday morning) poor Jack woke us up having his issue of sneezing blood. He had started to have some other issues on Sunday of no longer being able to control himself, for example, in his sleep. And he just wasn't THAT kind of dog...Jack was totally house trained and extremely well behaved....just an all-around great dog. So I went back to sleep with the decision that after work on Monday, I'd take him in to the vet and say goodbye so he didn't have to hurt any worse. But as I got ready for work Monday morning, things changed completely. I came out of the shower and it looked as if someone had been stabbed and ran through the house getting stabbed repeatedly. Poor Jack thought he was in trouble and Lucy followed him around almost like a kid asking "are you okay?" and looking at me as if she was yelling, "Mom, HELP!" Lucy typically kept her distance from Jack, and had only started playing chase with him in the past couple of days. I frantically tried to clean and comfort Jack and wipe his face off while repeating to the dogs "You're okay. It's okay." A few more sneezes and I lost it...

...there I stood, in my white work pants splattered with blood, cleaning rags in both hands, balling my eyes out like a lost child. I called my husband and incoherently uttered some words into the phone that triggered him to come home after PT. Being at the new job, missing a day of work wasn't really an option....I was already going to be late as it was. So, dear husband enters and immediately drops his jaw...."the whole house is ruined!" I told him it didn't matter now, and we could only let Jack know we loved him and he hadn't done anything wrong. Luckily our vet is within walking distance so he took him in without destroying one of our cars too.

My sweet husband stayed with Jack until the very end, without me even suggesting it. I didn't want Jack to die alone. Jack spent enough time alone. If you remember his story, he was a shelter dog....a two sentences shelter dog. He had been abandoned and alone too many times, and I wouldn't want him to go out that way. Thankfully my husband loved Jack enough to stay right by his side the whole time.

the house is pretty quiet without him here

We had Jack for not even two months. Am I mad? Do I feel ripped off that the humane society sold us a sick dog? Absolutely not. If they had found out what was wrong with Jack, rather than their crummy notes about a possible sinus infection, we never would have experienced the joy of having him in our family for a few weeks. Am I mad we forked over hundreds to try and make him feel better?....and hundreds more on replacing the items damaged when things went down? Not at all. In our case, ignorance brought Jack into our lives to open our hearts and teach us some of the most valuable lessons of life...