No one should be pushed or hurried through the grief of a pet. A pet is one of our family.....Every pet I have had is one of my children & will always have a place in my heart & there is no time frame that can be put on feelings of loosing one. I have done breeding of american eskimo dogs. I had breed one of my real loving babies...she & I spent a lot of time going together to nursing homes to visit with people & everyone wanted to love her.....she was my tiniest eskie (largest of my toys). One time she was acting strange & my husband told me to just put her into her crate. A few hours later I went to let her out of the crate & there were 2 little puppies that were dead. Neither of us ever realized that she was even pregnant let along being in labour. I tried another time & knew that she had breed. Toward the end, I had her MRI'ed & there was 1 puppy. I knew exactly when she was breed & watched her every minute while she was in labour. The baby was breech with the head coming out & looked stuck. I grabed her up & got my husband to get the car started so we could take her to the vet just in case we needed a c-section. Well, just as I did that, the baby popped out. Quite a huge puppy for her size but he looked pretty good but I took her into the vet anyway to have her checked. The first night, I had them in an x-pen to keep them controlled. The puppy got away from Mom & got stuck in the bars of the x-pen. My youngest puppy from a previous litter (other sire & dam), heard the puppy squeeling & went into the bedroom where I usually slept in to get me only my husband was in there. I was in the room with the puppy & was up immediately & helped get the puppy unstuck. I got the puppy warmed up again & pup him back with Mommy. He seemed to do ok the next day & then the next night, he got away from Mom again. I could see he wasn't doing ok, so in the middle of the night I quick took the baby to the emergench vet clinic. They tried to warm him up with a heating pad & I came home I checked Mom & sure enough, she wasn't producing milk at all. I picked up the puppy & kept him on the heating pad & did the tube feeding. I feed him hourly for about 1/2 the day & it had just too much trauma to it's body.....& it died on my lap as I was trying to feed it. To this day, I have never been able to get over the fact that if I had checked her milk production & had done the feeding from the beginning, I wouldn't have lost him. I have gone on but haven't forgotten that experience. I have learned from that experience, but I just can't let go of the fact that I could have prevented the puppy from dying along with the previous 2 ones which the lack of milk could have had cause the loss of them too.

I think that the key to our pets is that we will never forget any of them. All the cute little things they would do, the way they talk to us....my cats, my puppies, my rats, my hamster, my guinea pigs, my foals (even the miscarriages), & even the experience of being there when the vet for our horses had to put down a friends older horse who couldn't go on anymore. Any animal that we have is like having a child, & that is never forgotten. I have the belief that we will be with them in the end too. I know that there are many different concepts about this, but I think that anything that has the kind of relationship that our pets have wilt us means that they will be with in the end. Therefore for me, grieving for my pets is as important as grieving for friends of family....including the time it takes you to deal with it....it is personal & you are entitled to feel the feeling you feel,

Debbie