Looking for kind words after an awful day.
GP tech of 4 years…. I hate giving advice to family members. I always say, if you think you need to ask me, just take them to the vet.
Today was a perfect example of why.
My mom went away on a trip and had a dog sitter watching her dog. I have 4 cats and live an hour away so it doesn’t really work out for me to pet sit for her.
The dog sitter messaged me this morning saying that the dog was vomiting and not eating, said he looked like his breathing was off. She sent me a 15 second video, and from what I could see, the dog wasn’t really struggling to breathe. He had maybe a slight increased effort in his chest but, no abdominal breathing. It looked like he was quite uncomfortable, but not really in any distress. I still told the pet sitter to take him into the vet. My mom was set to fly home today so I was hopeful that it wasn’t anything serious and that she’d be able to come home to take care of him. About 30 minutes later the pet sitter gets him to his vet and he’s placed on oxygen, in congestive heart failure. They wanted to transfer him to an ER so that he would have a chance to make it until my mom got home, but as soon as they took him out of the oxygen cage, he crashed. They were able to get him back but he was not doing well.
This all happened while my mom was on an airplane, so they called and asked me to make the difficult decision to euthanize him. As a vet tech, I trusted the veternarian when she said he was suffering and that the kind thing to do would be to let him go. So, I made the extremely difficult decision to let them euthanize the sweet boy. I’m thankful for their fantastic veterinary care. The pet sitter was with him, and I’m thankful she stayed with him, but I feel so terrible that I wasn’t there for him when my mom couldn’t be. I feel so fucking guilty that I didn’t tell the pet sitter it was an emergency. And I wonder if he would’ve been taken straight to the ER, would he have survived long enough to see my mom one more time? It would’ve been an hour long car ride there from her house. I feel so bad and it feels like my fault that he died before she got home. My heart is broken. I’m embarrassed to even post this but i don’t know what else to do.