Bubba

Bubba is a white chow mixed breed dog. Bubba lived an extremely long life for a dog, 17 years. He was an outside dog and was a stray young dog when we first got him. Bubba was a very gentle dog when you got to know him, though he was a bit leary of strangers, especially men. This was due to lack of proper socialization as a puppy.

We learned a lot from Bubba, especially towards the end of his life. Bubba was growing extremely old. Over one hundred years old in human years. In the end, his eyesight was failing and his hearing wasn't good. We would take a spoon along and bang on the food bowl as we approached so he would know we were coming to feed him. If we didn't, we could walk up on him and startle him. But all in all, he still seemed to be a happy dog, glad to see us, with a wag in his tail but much slower movements.

Then early in October, the temperature at night dropped to forty degrees and we noticed that Bubba had started shivering. We tried to cover him up, but he didn't like that. We tried to bring him into our house, but he was afraid of the inside of a house and panicky. We recognized that Bubba's quality of life had dropped to zero. With winter fast approaching, things were only to get worse quickly.

We made the decision to have Bubba put down. This is a hard decision with a dedicated pet of so many years, but it was the unselfish thing to do. Looking back to see if we did the right thing, we feel alright with our decision but we also realized that there is no solid black line that is crossed that indicates when to put down a pet. Instead, there is a gradual, series of events that lead to that point. It is important to realize that there is a point, and not let selfishness allow you to go past that point. Almost no one will ever find that they moved too fast and had a pet put down to early. A few people will regret that they allowed their pet to suffer by not acting soon enough. Bubba made us keenly aware of this and we will be prepared to make the decisions in the future.