He kept at true good humour’s mark
The social flow of pleasure’s tide:
He never made a brow look dark,
Nor caused a tear, but when he died.
~Thomas Love Peacock

I’m very sad to report that Sammy, the senior Pug I have been relentlessly trying to get adopted, has been put to sleep.

Charlotte Creeley, Sammy’s foster mom and a Pug Rescue volunteer (as well as the founder of FBRN and the French Bulldog Village), passed along this message about Sammy’s last day —

had my 13 year old blind Pug foster boy, Sammy, euthanized this evening. I held him while the vet injected him, I would like to think he was not afraid, was maybe even a little pleased by the attention. He had started struggling to urinate last night, only drops coming out, and then this morning, the same. I got home early this afternoon, and found him restless and still unable to pee more than a few drops, so I took him to my vet.

My vet was unable to insert even the smallest catheter, and figured it must be a bladder stone blocking his urethra. He took x-rays and found what he took to be the bladder stones. The only way to remove them would have been to cut his bladder open, and Sammy was just too old and too weak to put through that. On top of that, Pug rescue could not afford to put up the $1200-$1500 the surgery would have cost, especially for a little old blind Pug with no prospects.

He was here only since Saturday, 11/21/09. He really did not even have the chance to settle in as part of the family, and I am so sorry for that. It breaks my heart when a little old rescue dies. I just wish they could live forever…

I know that many of you on Twitter have been endlessly supportive of Sammy, re tweeting his story in hopes of finding him a home. Thanks for all of your help.

Senior dogs are the most heartbreaking of all the rescues, aren’t they? Little old dogs do best with lives of regimented scheduling. They like to know that they eat, sleep and pee at the same time every day, that their beds will always be in the same place, and that their favorite blanket will be placed just so on the couch.

Tearing them out of that world, into a strange place with strange people, has to be unbelievably hard and confusing. Add to that how few people seem to want them, leaving them languishing in foster homes, or, more usually, simply put down for lack of time and space.

But adopting or fostering a senior dog gives back so very, very much. You can be the kind, safe place that makes their final months or years easier. You can give them the security that they lost, or perhaps had never even known. You can do the ultimate kindness, and be there at the end, to offer a soft word of reassurance as they leave us for the other country we’ll all travel to some day.

Godspeed, Sammy – and God bless Charlotte, and everyone like her who makes space in their hearts for the little old dogs and cats that no one else wants.