Just let go of Juneau, 14 years old, adopted him 12 years ago. A true fetch fiend, and a great guard dog, he was ever vigilant even to his last days. My head knows it was his time, but my heart is fucking ragged right now. RIP Junebug 💖
Edit to add: thank you all for your support. I am pretty deeply introverted and don’t have many people to lean on. Being able to share this part of his journey has been very helpful with this heavy heart of mine. Thank you all and take care, and for those of you with pets of your own, dote upon them a little extra for me 💖
Aww man, that sounds like what our future is going to hold unfortunately. It really hit me this past December we moved into a 2 story house. Almost her whole life Delia slept with my youngest daughter (now almost 14 herself, as soon as she moved to her own toddler bed Delia claimed it as hers to share), but in the new house the bedrooms are all up a big, steep, wood flight of stairs. The first night she tried to make it up and her hips couldn’t handle it, so some tears were shed and we got her a nice kennel to sleep in downstairs. Now she doesn’t seem to mind (and my daughter eventually got over it) but that made concrete how old she’s getting.
I had a similar adjustment with Juneau regarding stairs, I am also in a 2 level house, though at the time my stairs were carpeted which made them a little easier. I had a downstairs roommate who Juneau would regularly go to see, and even though eventually they moved out, Junebug still liked to make the rounds downstairs after they left. At some point I noticed that he was less stable and safe moving up and down the stairs so I decided to baby-gate off the stairwell and keep him up on the main level. If it’s any consolance, it was over a year ago that I had to do that, so maybe as long as you keep Delia on a low-impact lifestyle she’ll have lots more good time with your family 💖