It’s vet day on Saturday.

Time for Bonnie to get her acupuncture… Only I think it could be different this time.

I’m not sure if she’ll be coming home again…

She has dementia, which she has had for around 6 months, that we know of… How long before that we don’t know.

She also has a degenerative nerve condition that affects her back legs, meaning that they aren’t always where she’s expected them to be. And she has a touch of arthritis.

Until about 8 weeks ago the only noticeable problem was that she walked slowly and couldn’t manage to get upstairs anymore. But for the past 8 weeks her front legs have stiffened up and she’s been having difficulty putting all her weight on her left leg, but we don’t know why.

She’s also started to moan and complain more.

A lot more!

To begin with we thought it was because she was in pain, but it didn’t take long to realise that it was just her trying to get her own way (and succeeding!)

For example, she gets up at about 5:30am for her breakfast. Then she likes to have 5 minutes lying in the passage with the front door open so she can watch the world (or most days the milkman) go by.

If the door isn’t open, she squeaks, then cries then eventually squeals until it’s opened.

After 5 minutes or so she starts again. This time because she wants me to pick her up and turn her around to face the kitchen. If anyone else tries to move her, she flings herself back to the ground and becomes a dead weight.

Then I’m allowed to go to bed, while my mother gets her breakfast (with Bonnie watching).

She has about 10 minutes to eat her breakfast before the squeaking, crying and squealing starts again, because Bonnie wants to go to bed and wants my mother in the front room with her.

Several dozen demands later, and it’s 2/3pm and the squealing starts. This time it’s to wake me up. She’s decided that I should be getting up no later than 3pm, and usually doesn’t stop squealing until I am either downstairs, or I’ve shouted down to tell her I can’t move yet but that I am awake (I kid you not!).

As you can imagine, it’s quite a tiring day, and it’s impossible to get anything done. Bonnie can be sound asleep, but if my mother moves to go to the bathroom, she might get two steps up the staircase when the crying starts.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, she’s been a right pain the past few months. She’s never liked being left, but now you can’t even leave the room if she wants you in there… Oh and don’t be fooled, this isn’t any kind of loving “Don’t leave me, I can’t bare to be apart…” kind of thing. It’s more a “Sit yourself back down there now I want to sleep and I can’t do that if you are in the other room doing something interesting I want to know about!”

Needless to say, for the past few months, every conversation about her ends up in a discussion about getting her put down.

The problem is, my father has been waiting for her to die since she was 8 years old! Ever since then, every time you want to get something for her, it’s “There’s no point, she doesn’t need it, she won’t get the use out of it…” etc. What he really means is “Why bother she’ll be dead soon.”

Bad enough on it’s own, but it got to the stage that her collar was falling apart and he wouldn’t buy a new one because she wouldn’t get much use out of it, so it was a waste of money. The same with her bedding. That needed replacing, but he didn’t see the point.

I’m happy to say since then she has been through two new collars and 3 sets of bedding.

*sticks tongue out at father*

But I digress…

Needless to say, you can imagine my fathers view on the subject… It’ll save him having to replace her toilet in the garden, save him having to take her out and save her making a noise and disturbing him when he’s watching the television…

Well… Suffice it to say I don’t consider him to be an objective point of view in the discussion.

My mother is now leaning towards the fact that we should get her put down, because she is such hard work and she doesn’t know how much longer she can cope.

I can understand her point, she is a lot of work, she always has been… And since she’s never been an affectionate dog (she’s more cat than dog in personality) it’s been a lot of work with very little return.

I on the other hand don’t want to have her put down. I think that doing it because we don’t know how long we can cope is the wrong reason, and tagging “and it can’t be much fun for her” onto the end of it doesn’t make it better.

As much as I hate to admit it, I can see the appeal of not being ordered around, not having to spend what little energy I have looking after someone else, not having the fur floating around everywhere…

But then things like last night happen…

She was asleep and must have been having a nightmare, because she woke up crying. She wanted me to sit on her bed with her and cuddle her until she went back to sleep…

I think that is the most affectionate she has ever been. She’s never been a people person, she’s always been independent and from being a puppy would disappear upstairs for hours and only come and find you when she wanted her walk or a meal…

But sitting cuddling her in the middle of the night so she could get back to sleep… It was so lovely…

To feel needed, wanted… Maybe even loved…

We always wanted her to die in her sleep. To just go to bed one night and not wake up… But she’s too much of a fighter for that. She will fight to the very end, you can tell, she’s just that kind of animal!

Obviously I don’t want her to suffer, but I’m not entirely sure that she is suffering… As long as she gets her own way, she seems quite happy!

But with her legs being so hard to control, my mother doesn’t want to have to try and manage her in the winter. She’s not good on the ice on her own, so there is no way she could manage Bonnie as well, and I can’t be up all night and all day to do it, so she’s thinking that maybe now is the time to put her to sleep…

Maybe we should…

I don’t know…

I just know I don’t want to!

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