Mela has been struggling for awhile. Not eating, uncontrollable shaking, somewhat lethargic. It was an incredibly difficult decision to put her to sleep. We had taken her to the vet about a month before in Austin, he said she likely had some issue but whatever he said she had didn’t make sense to us. Then we moved to Omaha. She hadn’t improved much so we brought her to a vet in Omaha. They wanted to run tons of test totaling over $1,000. At that point, Mela was 14 or 15 years old and had lived a good life. We believe anything they would have found in the tests would have cost $1,000’s more and may not have prolonged her life much, if at all. The vet gave her a shot of something and Mela had a complete rebound. She was acting like her “old” self again and playing and eating. It was great and we thought whatever he gave her would stick and she would be back to normal. He also warned us that this would probably wear off after a couple weeks.
Sure enough, about 2 weeks later, she regressed. So we decided to have a vet come to our home and put her down. It happened to be the same vet that Kacie shadowed when she thought she wanted to be a vet and passed out. He was a good guy, he let me hold her, explained the process, and gave us time to say our goodbyes while he waited patiently.
Mela was an amazing dog. I believe God puts people or things in your life to help you get through hard times. I adopted Mela in 200X when she was likely 1 or 2 years old. I was alone in Houston, no friends, and had just moved into my own apartment. She was a terrible puppy. I recall the foster mom really wanted us to have her but the adoption agency was completely against me having her. I was a single guy, living in a 600 square foot apartment and someone else wanted to adopt her (a stay at home mom). Well for whatever reason, the stay at home mom didn’t pass the background check and Mela was mine.
She snuggled up with me in bed on those hard nights, would constantly give me “Mela hugs” where she would just smash her face into me and rub her head and even though I wasn’t always the best “dad”, she was really my first kid. I loved that dog and it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make to put her down.
I love you Mela and thank God for putting you in my life.
