Our hearts are broken. We’ve never experienced this kind of hurt before. Some people would say, “She’s just a Dog.” Not to us. Three months after being together we got Miss Tickles and her “sister’ Tessa. That was 9 years ago. For nine years, we’ve all been together or at least 3 of us almost every minute of every day.

We are blaming ourselves right now for going on a business trip out of town without her. When we got home Miss Tickles couldn’t walk and was in a lot of pain.

Many of you know she was given an MRI that showed an issue in the brain and an issue with her spinal cord. The nuero surgeon, associated with the emergency room, recommended surgery for a disk that was hitting her spinal cord immediately. We later found from our family vet that reviewed the MRI that there were 3 places that the spinal cord was compromised. Our family vet is guessing that the nuero surgeon opted to do surgery on the worst. Our baby has been in extreme pain since the first day. After several trips back to the same ER and after several medications, her pain only worsened. She cried and screamed as we held her through the day and night. We probably should have let her go at that point, but we held out for hope.

Last Monday, we went to the animal hospital again…desperately asking that they try something else that will relive Miss Tickle of her pain. They gave us a fifth medication and said it “might” work. They offered to take her off our hands for 3 days to give us a break from her crying. We couldn’t do that to her again. When we took her there for the surgery, they kept her for a couple of days. When we arrived to visit, we heard her in the back screaming. Then after shooting her with pain meds, they brought her to us. She looked so scared and sad, like, “why am I here all alone?”

We took her home once again so that we could go through this with her. The pain only worsened. Monday night we noticed she could no longer chew or drink properly. Her mouth was paralyzed on the right side. Then the entire right side of her body was giving out. We called our family vet and he came to the house. He also found she had no feeling in the right side of her mouth and parts of her body. He also found that she had gone blind in her right eye.

We never thought we would consider letting our baby go. We also never knew how much we could love something. We realized we were keeping her around so that WE could still have her. The truth is, Miss Tickles hates cages. Even if we found a miracle drug for her pain, she got 3 more neck surgeries, they figured out the problem with the left side of her brain and if that was most likely making her paralyzed, and if rehab helped her to one day walk again….she would have to be in a small cage during all that time, unable to do anything. That’s not Miss Tickle’s spirit. If you’ve ever seen a video of Miss Tickles, it probably resulted in her either running super fast or kissing the hell out of someone’s face. That’s her spirit …to love and to run.

Wednesday night we made the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make. We were going to give her a few more great moments. We gave her double her medications. We took her to the park several times in the night and helped her run the best she could. She fell and it didn’t look pretty, but she did it. She ate McDonald’s and treats the best she could and drank milk the best she could. We told her over and over how much we loved her as we cried all night.

Thursday morning our family vet came over. We apologized to Miss Tickles for letting the pain go on this long. We held her for the last time and told her how much we love her. We then said goodbye and he gently put her to sleep.

As we are writing this, we are crying again. That is all we have done since we knew we were going to let her go. We feel like, although we are crushed, she is free to run again and go kiss whoever she wants. Other times we don’t know what she is doing and we beg God to please please hold her for us.

Miss Tickles, we love you so much. We hope we gave you as much happiness as you gave us.

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