We had to say the final goodbye to Bruce at the weekend. After his usual walk around the block on Saturday morning he suddenly took a turn for the worse, couldn't seem to lift his head, breathing became very laboured and we knew something wasn't right.

We rushed him to the vets and they advised that he had likely had an organ failure or a possible ruptured tumour and that there was nothing they could do given its severe ty and his age. We took the decision to help him to the other side and end his pain, holding him, stroking him and cuddling him.

I'm amazingly thankful for the years we had with him, originally he was just going to be a Foster dog. He was doing so badly in the shelter we felt taking him home even for a few weeks would help him even if he wasn't quite the dog for us. That first afternoon through the front door we lay his bed down in the living room and he sat in it took a big sigh and it was as if he knew he was home. And that was kinda that.

He was always the softest most gentle of dogs around us and his 2 cat brothers and impeccably behaved with my brothers kids whenever they visited. He was usually happiest sitting in the sun in the back garden barking at overflying birds or whatever he assumed was going on behind the back fence. Always available to help if there was too much dinner on your plate or if the cat left anything in their bowl.

He was probably a few years older than the shelter lead us to believe, probably more like 5 or 6 than the 3 they estimated. So he'd made it to around 13 which is not a bad age for a staff. The last year or so he had slowed up a lot, his arthritis despite medicines was hard on him, walks had shortened a lot, he'd lost his hearing and seemed to be struggling a bit more.

Yesterday happened very quickly but it was the right time, I'm just glad we had him as long as we did.

RIP Bruce


Sent from my EML-L29 using Tapatalk