RIP Beloved Chester

Yesterday I had to put our little Dachshund, Chester, to sleep. He was 13 and had been becoming incontinent, as well as having convulsions. We took him to the vet first, for an assessment, and she said he had an enlarged liver which was the source of all these problems, that he was probably in a lot of pain, and that he would keep getting worse.

This is very hard because it comes on the heels of the loss of my cat Branwell, which I wrote about in this post. Now only tiny Charlotte (Bronte) is left.

This is even harder on my partner (who is mostly an "ex" and who lives separately) because the little dog was staying with her and had become her whole world. I had told her that when Chester died I would get her another cat and pay expenses (and take the cat with me if she was in the hospital or a nursing home) but she said her therapist said she should hold off until she moves. I have mixed feelings about that. She desperately needs to move into an assisted living facility or some kind of low-income housing, but most of these do take pets if you just have one cat or a small dog. So I said she could perhaps consider fostering a cat.

For me this is most upsetting as it represents something else lost from my pre-February 15, 2004 life, the life I so wanted an escape from (see here), but which, nonetheless, was my life for several decades.

First I lost my best friend Dora, then my dog sitter, both of whom were connected to me and my partner through our love of pets but both of whom also supported my singing when I began my new life, then my mother (although as she had known me from birth this was different), and then Branwell.

Here are some pictures. The first of Chester on his last day, and another of me and Chester and his dog-sitter.

I am feeling both sad and nostalgic, and rather numb, and not at all like singing, but I need to get ready for choir practice tonight, and then I have a lesson tomorrow. And I am still waiting to hear the outcome of the audition I went to. So until I hear "no" (I plan to contact the pianist the week before rehearsals start if I haven't heard anything) I will continue working on both the mezzo leads in that opera.