Peppa

aka Princess Sassy Pants

This week I am dealing with the death of my beloved Pug Peppa.

She was special, and she was my baby.

She’s had a bad tummy off and on since April, and we’d seen the vet a few times and tried different things. On Friday, she was diagnosed with pancreatitis. We put her on a low-fat diet, but over the weekend she got worse, refusing to eat or walk much.

On Monday morning, she had a seizure. She was sitting on my lap in the morning and just stiffened and rolled over. We took her up to the vet, and she seemed so much brighter already, though she still had a bad tummy. They took her in for further tests, but she reacted badly to the sedation they gave her to do an ultrasound, and her breathing deteriorated. She was transferred to the night vets, but at 1 am they called us to say she’d gone downhill. We went in to see her and had to make a decision no fur parents ever want to make: to say goodbye. Her proteins, albumin and globulin, had dropped over the weekend and were very low. She had ascites in her abdomen, and when we went in, they noted fluid in her lungs where she had likely aspirated and a collapsed lung. Even if she made it through the night, the next step would have been further investigations, probably under General Anaesthetic, and it was obvious that wasn’t an option.

We always said that if we had to choose to euthanise, we’d want to do it at home. We knew the vet we would choose. But we knew that trying to get her through the night so we could do that would be for us, not for her. She was suffering, and the most love we could give her was to say goodbye, tell her we loved her, and be with her till the end.

We stroked her, gave her cuddles, and she went so fast and peacefully. She was tired, and she was ready to go.

I couldn’t bear to leave her. I wanted to stroke her velvet ears and rub her squidgy tummy. The thought that I will never get to do that again is unbearable. The hole she has left feels too big. The pain too much to hold. When I think about it I can’t breathe. I can barely eat. I know that grief doesn’t disappear; we grow around it, but I don’t know how I can grow around something this big.

I’ve never felt pain like this, so visceral and real that I want to howl, not just cry. I overthink every moment we had, every decision we made for her. What if I’d done this? Asked this? Insisted on more bloods earlier? We left her bright and alert and licking our faces, and she never came home. I know every decision we made was for her; all I’ve ever wanted for her was that she was happy and loved. I can second-guess myself forever, but I can’t change what’s already done, so I have to remind myself that she was loved, and we were there for her.

When they told us she had pancreatitis, we ordered her lots of low-fat food to try, and some low-fat treats. As they arrive this week, every parcel is a reminder that we did our best, but also that it wasn’t enough to save her.

We know having pets is going to be hard, and that one day we’ll have to say goodbye, but that doesn’t make it any easier when it happens. It doesn’t give the love anywhere to go when they’re gone.

We adopted Peppa and Waldo together when they were 4 years old. For 8 years, they have been the total centre of our lives. They changed everything and were always there. The routine our whole day revolved around, and I never regretted a second of it.

Peppa’s sassy story did not deserve to end like this. She would always love fusses and allow you to love her, but she didn’t give her love easily. Once it was earned, she nominated herself as protector and was the boss of the household. She made sure we were all together on walkies, surveyed the perimeter whenever we went away and stood guard at the bathroom door. She cared for us all, in her own special judgey way. She reminded us when it was time to go to bed by standing in the middle of the living room and huffing, or if we were really pushing it, going to stand at the bottom of the stairs. When we were leaving the park, she would stop and stare as we walked away, hoping we’d stay longer, and then chase us down if we got too far away. She never chased a ball, and rarely played with toys; all she wanted was to be with her people, and to be fed and loved. When she was happy, she would do a little frolic, bouncing across a field with joy and giving Waldo a little shoulder bump. When she was sad or relaxed, her tail would uncurl, and I can’t believe I’ll never get to see it curl up again when one of us walked into the room.

I have no end for this piece, because there’s no end to the pain I’m feeling right now. Everything I do is tinted by a world with no Peppa in it. A world where there’s no Pug asleep between my feet, or curled up by my hip. I tried to think of a place she loved, or a thing she loved, where I could do something as a memorial, and the only thing I could think of is that she loved being with us. I’m looking into getting a memorial tattoo done with her ashes so she can be with me forever, because the thought of her not being is more than I can stand.