My dear Quita is dead

My dearest dog Quita, or Strolls Querida, as was her full name, is dead.

We joked about how Quita was born in a bucket of fuel, she was allways happy, crazy, but with a very short attention span.

Over the years, there had been a few minor incidents where she’d bark or even nibble at someone as a perfectly reasonable reaction to something sudden, such as someone accidentally stepping on her, but never a brawl, or anything major.

Last year, Quita began showing more hostility after a period of false maternity, she took a few rubber pets as her children, and behaved agressively (barking) against every person and animal she laid eyes on. Our veterinary recommended we remove the pets, and low and behold, we saw a completely different dog, much calmer, docile than she had ben for the last 2-3 years!

Then we took a trip to Germany, and on the way back, she bit a stranger in the leg. The bite itself is excusable – she was eating out the back of the car when the person almost stumbled over her. It was only skin-deep, so she did hold back, but the episode was enough to put a deep scare into me and Bergfrid. A few days ago, she scared my neighbour as he walked by our entrance, she charged at him, barking and missed him only by a meter when her leash stopped her from getting at him. This is what sparked us to get to the veterinary to have a talk.

The veterinary knows Quita well, as he has been her exclusive veterinary ever since she came into our home. We have visited him at least twice a year for the last 5 years, and so he knows her history well, and was pretty firm in his conclusion: She’s too old to be of value to the police/military, and to give her away to some other family is just going to be handing the problems over to them. We were left with the choice of limiting her life further by incarcerating her movements even more (more at home, tied up when we have visitors etc) or just ending it.

Knowing her inside out made the choice easy. Quita loves to run and socialize. To take that away from her would mean to make her life miserable, so we decided to end her life there, before we got back home and started regretting it, and potensially risk a catastrophe when some kid playing ball accidentally ran into our garden while Quita was in there.

The veterinary found a nice room for us, and gave Quita an injection with a heavy muscle relaxant so that she would feel relaxed and drowsy. He then left, so that we could make our goodbyes, and then came back around half an hour later for the final, lethal injection. This put her out almost immediately, there was no cramps or anything. We stayed with her until she was getting cold.

It is not possible for me to explain how much Quita meant to me. It is true what they say: “You cannot possibly grasp what a best-friend is unless you’ve had a dog”.

The attachment, joy, and companionship that Quita gave will be so, oh so missed!

It was the right decision to make, but  it’s a whole lot easier to say than to do. It was possibly the hardest decision that I’ve made,

-ever.