Peace 🕊

Dear Tripawd’s community;

My sweet Lucy, the best, brightest, most wonderful girl, went into peace on Thursday, April 11th. It was National Pet Day. The irony is not lost upon Daddy and myself (Mommy). Yet Lucy legitimately had the best sense of humor I’d ever seen in a pup, so there’s an ironic beauty at work here, or so I choose to believe.

My sweet baby girl, who I fully believe is in the place where all good pups go at the end of all things, had a amazing 2 years after the first diagnosis of cancer, and a beautiful, blessed 6 years before that. Do I feel like she was taken from me too soon? Yes. Is it unfair that she should have lived until 12, or 14 (maybe 16, if she got really, really ancient), and yet she only had 8 years and 2 months, and was battling cancer for 2 of those years? It is fair? Why did this happen to her? And why couldn’t I stop it?

And none of those questions bring her back. And Daddy and I are left with our thoughts, and our memories, and I find myself noticing the bits of fur that still cling to the seat of my car, and I know that I’d give anything for her to shed once more on everything I own, so I could always have her near me, and wouldn’t have to feel this devastating sadness of being without her. I go to work and miss telling her bye. I call home during lunch, and miss asking how she is. I come home and she’s not there.

There’s other things too. Like how I don’t have to worry about coming in from a darkly lit room, because no one will bark like I’m a mysterious intruder (Lucy had no idea how I (the burglar) had gotten into the house, but it was going down!) or how when I come from the shower, no one sniffs my legs excitedly, because they smell different. On Saturday, when I wake up early, no one gets up with me to drink coffee and watch Unsolved Mysteries reruns. No one knows me as Mommy, and runs into my lap when I’m sad or crying. I’ve had to cry these tears without my sweet girl. Daddy’s been wonderful, but he has tears, too. And we miss our girl in a way I’ve never experienced.

She was finally going to get spayed. My girl’s been intact (we got her straight from a family needing homes for a litter of pups, so she hadn’t been dewormed, vaccinated, or spayed). We took care of the first two, but put off spaying for a bit. This bit turned into her whole lifespan. After the cancer took her leg, and the radiation compromised her lung function, we were unsure about putting her under anesthesia for the surgery. We finally got a go-ahead after she went from monthly/bimonthly CT scans to check for cancer growth. She was on 6 mo checks, and a spay was scheduled (after few financial delays), but was pushed back after Lucy went into heat again. When finally ready, we took her in for surgery.

Thank God they listened when we said she’d been coughing. Thank God they scanned her and found the mass in her lungs. Thank God they found it pushing on her trachea, causing a ‘u’ shaped bend. Thank God they checked her before putting her under, because she probably wouldn’t have woken up.

We knew it was serious. We took her back to UT. They prescribed steroids and we were to come back in 3 weeks after they had a chance to work. This was in early March. Lucy didn’t make it 3 weeks.

She’s gone now. She was coughing a bit, then a lot, then medicine helped, then she was phlegmy, then medicine helped, then she was tired, and couldn’t eat for coughing, and couldn’t drink water for coughing, and couldn’t sleep for struggling to breathe, and then we loved her so much that we took her to her Mimi’s house and let her lay on the patio, and look at the grass and sunshine, and the bees buzzing about, and then took her to the vet, where they helped her find her peace. And she slept for the first time in 2 straight days, and we held her. And as I watched her slip into her final moments, it took everything in me not to cry out like an animal, but I was not going to let sadness or fear be the last thing my baby heard. So she felt love, and her favorite blanket, and Mommy and Daddy. Then she was gone.

And my baby is at peace. And I feel so ripped from my little-love that it aches. She was my world. Like I said in one of my first posts, she’s extraordinary because she’s a pup. The best pup. And regardless of tense, she is always here. Lucy exists in my heart forever as the most wonderful girl I could have ever, ever asked for. She came into our lives as a mystery, and was the most wonderful adventure anyone could ever partake in. I’m grateful she allowed me the privilege of being who she knew as her Mommy.

Thank you for letting us share our journey. I’m hoping to post some more info about what we went through with her radiation process if I can get up the gumption. The procedures my girl had did everything they could, and I wouldn’t change a thing. We tried our hardest, but heaven needed the best 3-legged angel it could find.

💕All Love forever to my sweet, wonderful girl, Lucy 💕