It's hard. It's insanely hard.

There's no way I can fully describe the way I'm feeling because there are just so many things going on in my brain. I'm trying not to shake as I type this and I'm trying to swallow back tears as I stare at this picture while I write. I thought that I would document this time of my life because I want to remember all of the good times I've had with my buddy. It's not everyday you get to wake up and snuggle next to a furry lug, but these past 12 years have been truly amazing with him. I hope this post can help those of you who have lost their furry friends or who have very old furry friends looking for someone to talk to.

For those of you who are new, my golden retriever, Rigly, has been mentioned a few times on here. He's been with me for so long and we got him back in 2005 when I had just moved into my current home. You don't think that your pet is ever going to leave you until that day without a tail wag, or a bark to welcome you home. I've had some great memories with Rigly and my family; we go on annual camping trips which I have blogged about in the past and he absolutely loved the new scents since he was a very domesticated (and spoiled) city dog. Being in the wilderness was his favorite. My family and I had a secret sand dune that we would watch the sunset on over the lake and we would try to push Rigly up it since dogs aren't made to go up steep, sandy dunes anyway.

Rigly was never a bad dog. We got him from my aunt who lives out in Oregon and she actually brought him over on an airplane, if you could believe it. My family and I decided on getting the "runt" of the litter and wanted the puppy who didn't jump on or bite everybody. In fact, when we first got him, he would immediately hide under a chair. Over the past years, there has never been a time when Rigly has bitten or growled at any of us. He was so protective, yet lazy and tired at the same time. He was my lump. My lug-nut. My loaf. My beached whale. "Poop", my Dad would call him. It's funny because Rigly was so mellow that I would just lay stuff on him for no reason and he would just lie there and not care. But he did care. A lot. About all of us.

I remember Freshman year when I broke my ankle in softball, I would come home from a long day of crutching along and I would plop all my stuff on the floor and lay on the couch. Pitter patters later, came in Rig and he just layed his head on the couch right next to my face. That's when I knew that he knew. There have been many times when Rigly would comfort us. Normally, he would trudge around the living room and hop onto the couch with my mom and just blatantly stare at her--and then lay right on top of her legs. I also remember a time when my dad had a terrible chest cramp and no one was around to notice. Rigly was lying right next to him with his cute box ears and would look worried because he knew that his "master" was not the way he normally is. He was a great dog.

Over the past couple of weeks, we knew that something was up. He had a growing mass near his abdomen and we knew that it wasn't right. Overtime, we just ignored it and was told by the vet that it was just from old age. We enjoyed our time with him, but it got worse when his back legs gave out on him and his mass got even bigger. He was tested and got diagnosed with liver disease. We think he was suffering from liver cancer, but it was too expensive to get surgery on him to fully tell if it was cancer.

His appetite slowed and it got to the point where we were giving him chicken fries from Burger King and chocolate donuts because that's all he literally wanted (and yes chocolate is bad for dogs). He kept drinking, which was good. I couldn't bear to see him starve. From Monday to Friday, he ate nothing. Zip. We couldn't force food into him and stress him out more. It was already painful to see my Dad carry him in and out of the house just to pee.

Sorry I just broke down a little and now I'm cleaning tears off my keyboard. UGH.

He would throw up nonstop and he actually had a couple accidents in our house which made it smell even worse. We had blankets and carpets everywhere to help him get up and sometimes we would just push him across the hardwood floor to move him. His mind was saying something totally different than his body was. He wanted to eat and play, but his body failed him immensely. We thought it was best to put him down and as I'm writing this, my parents are at the vet with him and he's at peace now with his puppy mom and dad.

He lived a very long and happy life. He's been through a lot of good and bad parts of mine. We've experienced a lot with him and I'm giggling at the time when he somehow got out of our house and ran straight across a busy highway and somehow survived because he was the little stinker that he was. Oh god, I hate talking about him in the past tense; he was just here.

I want him to be happy and he made me happy. It was probably one of the kindest things (besides giving him a ton of people food and love lol) that we could have done for him; to release him from his pain and suffering. I will never forget him and I will wait until we meet again. I love you Rigly.

<3