Today is the day that I'm suppose to be happy, I'm suppose to celebrate. After all, it's my birthday. So what's wrong? What could possibly make me so upset that I won't smile on my own birthday? Did daddy not give me the gift I wanted? Did mommy not make the cake I like? No, that's not it. I had to put my dog to sleep - permanent sleep that is, on my own birthday.

After her heat periods, she usually acts weird. She can refuse to eat and refuse to take long walks and so forth. So I didn't understand that anything was wrong until this very morning when she woke me up early in the morning because she had to go urinate really bad. So I took her for a walk, smiled at the lovely morning because it's my birthday. When I got back to my apartment, I noticed that white fluid came out of her vulva. She intensivly licked it to clean herself up - of course, by now I understood what was wrong: uterise infection. Most ol' female dogs gets it, unless they have been spayed.

I called my dad, I called my mom. My mom would try to get a hold of a car while I tried to get a hold of a vet. But since it's Saturday and vets aren't like doctors - no one answered the phone. Though I did notice that one clinic would open up at 9 o'clock, so I had two hours to kill. Since my dog had a little fever and was a bit stressed indoors, I decided to take her for a walk to let time pass and make her feel more comfortable, cool her off if you like. She immidiatly turned happy when entering the world outside my box-shaped apartment. Happy and energic, no sign of sickness - though I'm not a fool, I know she wasn't getting better. Though I was happy she wasn't suffering.

After a long walk with just being with her, really just being there and giving her attention, I tried calling again - but the vet didn't answer even though they should've opened. After a while I told my mom to drive to me anyway and we would personally visit the vet without giving them heads up via phone.

After a long wait, my mom arrived and still no one had answered the phone. Into the car we go, and after a 15 minute drive we're by the vet, it's open. My dog is still happy and energic. Not long after, the vet has confirmed my amateur diagnosis, it's uterise infection. Two options, well three really, surgery, medicine or put her to sleep. Too old for surger, medicine doesn't work - even the vet told us that at best the medicine would give her another week and then she'll get the same infection again. So the third option sucks, but the only way to go for a 10 year old german shepherd.

The room where she got put to sleep was very nice, lit candles and a nice rug to lie down on.
First shot. This one was just to calm her down, not because she wasn't calm, just so she wouldn't be a problem when giving the two last shots. You know, pre-caution. She fell asleep after a couple of minutes, but woke up for a minute and put her head in my thighs which was beautiful - but oh so real. It's no movie, I'm not gonna be able to press the stop button when it gets to sad.

Second shot, by now I had to get up and change my position, so she was now in my arms and breathing very slowly. The second shot made her breathing stop completly after a while, the third shot killed her. Yes, killed is a strong word in the english dictionary - but putting to sleep is not really what I had to do, she's not sleeping. She's dead - killed.

No one could've left a bigger hole in my life that my precious Orina.

In loving memory of: [link]