Your Pet Loss Stories

by Rick Sarlat
(Reading, PA)

My girlfriend and I lost our beautiful baby boy Barley, a radiant Yellow Lab, three weeks ago and the heartbreak is still deeper than any I've ever experienced.

We had to put him down just two weeks shy of his sixth birthday due to kidney failure from Lyme Disease. I first started noticing symptoms about a month ago, but they weren't severe so I rationalized his changing and lessening appetite as him being a picky eater, something he'd always been.

We'd been mountain biking together (he would run alongside me while I biked the trails) since he was about 8 months old and he had only recently begun to slow down. He would never let me take the lead and, in fact, would growl at my front tire when I would inch ahead. So when he wasn't even trying to win anymore, just seemingly happy to keep pace, I rationalized that age was finally catching up with him. He was about to turn six after all, I told myself, which technically made him 40-something. But when he stopped eating even his favorite, fast food, I knew it was time for a trip to the vet.

In short, the prognosis was not good, but this was our baby boy so we would fight it, we told ourselves. The vet told us there was a 5-10 percent chance of him pulling through, but to us that meant 50. This was our 110 pound bulletproof lab, if anyone could fight this off, it was Barley.

We force-fed him and gave him Sub Q fluids for the next three weeks and the emotional peaks and valleys were overwhelming. All the listlessness, the vomiting, the perpetual sad eyes. It all seemed microscopic the day he fetched a ball and went for a short bike ride with me. But the hope and sheer bliss of that moment were erased the very next day when he didn't move an inch.

About two days later, he began collapsing under his own weight and hyperventilating frequently and we knew then that it was time. He was suffering. His eyes, the same eyes that sometimes looked as if they quite possibly contained all the joy in the world, were now hollow, lifeless and could no longer mask the pain. I've lost several people in my life and none has made the impact on my soul that Barley has. I only hope to see him again someday.


We're in the middle of building a memorial to him at the head of a trail I built on the property. A wooden sign attached to a tree will jut out from its trunk and read:

BARLEY TRAIL
In Loving Memory Of Our Beautiful
Baby Boy (Oct. 2007-Oct. 2013)

We plan to bury his ashes in front of the tree and put a stone marker on top of them. We also plan on putting a bench nearby at some point. I had hoped to have this memorial done before writing this so I could post pictures, but it could be another couple of weeks and I needed to write something about this now. It really is therapeutic. I've experienced such a range of emotions and I often wonder if it's normal to have such an extreme reaction to the loss of a pet, but sites like this make me realize that there are plenty of others like me out there.

Lately I've been blaming myself, thinking that I should have been more vigilant in checking him for ticks because we live in the woods and the mountain biking and all must have made him high-risk. I also only recently found out about the canine Lyme disease vaccination. This was my first dog and I feel like I did so many things wrong. One thing I know I did right, though, is give him the best life anyone could have, despite it being just six years. It was the best six years of my life. He absolutely loved being my son, my protector, my best friend. My everything.