My sweet boy

My sweet ten year old coonhound was put down this week. I couldn’t even be there. He had started having some trouble a week ago, but we hoped my mom could take him to the vet and do surgery and fix him. I had to take my spouse to see a sick relative (who they also didn’t get to see in time), and my boy got worse in the two days we were gone and the vet said it was time. He was already in the ground before I got home to him. I have this massive guilt for leaving when he was sick and a huge fear that if I had taken him to the emergency vet he could have been saved, even if only for another year or two max. I know bigger dogs like him don’t live super long. I would have been in debt, but I would have had him. Instead I feel like I let him down and he died as a result. I have this wild intrusive thought to go dig him up so I can hold him like I never got to. To kiss his sweet soft ears and rub his chest and paws and say “It will be ok”. To say, “I’m sorry, forgive me”. I saw another post someone had written that was exactly this. It helped to read someone else felt this way. The replies also helped. I know he isn’t really there anymore. I had him buried next to my mom’s old dog, a houndy girl who my boy played with years ago. My childhood German shepherd is out there too and I know they are guiding him to play in the fields and nap in the hot sun just like he liked to do. But I still get this painful pangs of irrational fear that he is just lying there in the ground, cold and alone. I hate walking away from his grave, and I hate when the sun goes down and I know he’s just…out there. I know it will get better. But for now it’s horrible.