She died badly before the vet could administer the drugs and I am spiralling.

I lost my sweet shih tzu earlier this morning. She was maybe five when I brought her home ten years ago, and she's been my little shadow in the ten years since, never letting me leave a room without immediately following. She's been my housemate and constant joy for ten years. I've been doing the math for some time and knowing that at 15, my time with her was limited. Turns out it was much more limited than I thought, as she went from flinging stuffies around the room to debilitating sickness in short order.

I knew it was always going to be awful to say goodbye to "SUCH a good girl" (as I frequently told her); she's been my housemate and constant joy for ten years. My life is built around her. And yet, I thought that I'd be as okay as a grieving 'person could be: I tried so hard to show how much she was loved every single day so I'd know that when it was her time, she'd leave the world feeling that love as she drifted away, with me holding her paw.

But she didn't. I didn't realize what was happening to her soon enough. She wasn't having labored breathing, she was actually slowly suffocating because of a lung disorder. She suffered for hours longer than she needed to, because I didn't realize how bad it was when I opted to wait for her own vet to open in the morning, rather than letting her be euthanized at the emergency vet, a place we had been the night before and that she hated. By the time I got there and was ushered into the Quiet Room, it was clear she was suffering and I was realizing just how badly I messed up by waiting out the night.

And while we waited for the vet to join us, she suffocated. She looked so scared. Her final moments in the air were gasping for air she could get, convulsing, with form coming from her mouth and nose. I ran her out to the front desk and said she was dying, and a vet ran back with me. Literally two seconds after they said the needle was in, she was gone.

She didn't get to drift away while I told her how much she was loved. She died a bad death, scared and suffocating and in pain. And while I keep telling myself that the last ten years let her know she was loved, but I just keep seeing her awful final moments and thinking that she was probably wanting me to help and not understanding why I wasn't helping her, why I was just SITTING there while she gasped harder and harder. That was her last moment on earth and I can't stop thinking of it. It was the worst ending for the best little girl who didn't deserve any of it.