I know the feeling.
Our last dog died in the kitchen, lying across my lap as the vet gave her a shot above her front paw. She was an Alsabrador - cross Alsation and lab - and was also a rescue when she was tiny. She came from the Cat & Dog Home in Glasgow, our second from there.
She'd survived having two cancer ops, each time the removal of an entire row of teats. It returned elsewhere and nothing could be done. She went in the morning, after a bad night of storms; an hour before the vet came she had enough strength to give my wife her paw. But she could hardly breath.
She couldn't come to Spain until she was two because they won't give them the anti-rabies shot younger. When we got her we had no idea we'd be leaving Scotland. She loved it here, the beach, the swimming. A far cry from being abandoned somewhere in Glasgow.
She was the last dog we had; we could never let ourselves face that loss again. My eyes smart as I write this; she died in 1990. Unless you have had an animal like that you can never know how close they become in a way smaller ones can't. She was my wife's protector when she went to the beach when I had to go back to the UK on business trips. She was some powerful creature. Nobody would have got past her to harm my wife.
A Sots girl who also lived here in the 80s had a large Alsatian. Her husband worked in the riggs and was away most of the time. That dog walked beside her everywhere; never on a leash, it never strayed into traffic or off the pavement without her. Amazing animal. I remember bumping into her one day in the newsagents and giving her the customary air-kiss. Not until I stepped back did I realise the dog had me fixed with its hugely intelligent eyes. I felt very lucky to walk away from that innocent encounter.
http://www.roma57.com/uploads/4/2/8/7/4287956/9800595_orig.jpgRob
