Bittersweet

Today was a hard one.

We lost a companion and member of our family.  Our German Shepard was euthanized today.

He was such a wonderful dog, so loving, loyal, and obedient.

Alas, old age and a variety of untreatable health issues was enough for us to decide we couldn't watch him suffer anymore.  He was miserable on the inside and on the outside was swollen, riddled with infections, bleeding sores, and losing his hair in large patches.  Poor guy, he was in a very rough state.

We took the kids out of school early to come with us to the vet appointment. They wanted a chance to say their goodbyes. It was hard. We were all crying. I did videotape right up until the moment he was given his lethal shot.   As he was being injected, we held his head while he slowly slumped to the ground, quickly drifted into unconsciousness, and after several seconds, his heart finally stopped beating. 

We've had Jiro for 10 years now.  Jed put a lot of time and love into this dog.  They were buddies for sure.  Jed and Connor are having the hardest time by far, but even I'm surprised at how many tears I, myself, have shed over the last few days.  He's impacted every one of our lives.

But boy, will we have some great memories of Jiro to remember, like his adorable puppy stage.  As much as we tried to train him to keep his ears up (a characteristic of his breed), he became our floppy-eared German Shepard instead.  

Pictured here is Connor (3yrs old) and Jiro as a puppy:

We'll miss him but we know he's happy and healthy once again.

On the other hand, this day has been a wonderful one too, because we added another member to our family.  I admit the timing is terrible, we should have given everyone more time to mourn before bringing another dog in.  However, we felt the right dog had come along and we didn't want the opportunity to pass us by.  We already knew we wanted to get another dog.

We found this sweet guy at our local animal shelter, already housetrained and knowing several commands.  So far he's fitting right in just beautifully:


Just as I hoped, Jack is already making the loss much easier to deal with for everyone.