I am so sorry for your loss of Odin. I wasn't going to speak of Athena here because we only lost her a couple months ago, but her story is so similar to Odin's, I thought you might find some comfort knowing someone here also went through a similar heartbreaking situation. I apologize in advance for length, and I only wrote this story a few weeks ago to help make sorts of our decision to euthanize our girl. My heart goes out to you...and I am sure Odin and Athena have crossed paths by now, waiting for us...
I recently buried my girl, Lady Athena- at the tender age of 2 1/2. She was a GORGEOUS German Shepherd, with the softest doe eyes. She was banished to a small room in the back of a pet store where I worked when she failed to sell as a cute fluffy pup. She outgrew her crate by 4 months of age, but they kept her in it. She didn't know how to walk. My husband always wanted a German Shepherd and wanted to see this dog I so often talked about. I had called her Little Princess. He came to the store, I bathed her (twice- she STUNK) and brought her out for him to see. She crawled across the floor to him, right into his lap. He picked her up like a baby as she softly looked up at him with those doe eyes.
My husband said nothing to me- just spoke softly to her, stood up and walked across the store to the counter and stood in line, still holding her like a little baby in his arms. I took care of writing the check for her- my husband was not about let anyone else hold this little angel. He stood there, angered some that I was employed somewhere where a sweet puppy had been banished to a windowless back room to become so pitiful- but mostly he held her so close to him as if to say "I'm your daddy now, your protector. I'll be damned if anyone ever throws you away again." He never uttered a word.
The man standing in line behind them quipped about the newfound couple: "Who's buying who?"
So we began our short but powerfully loving journey with Lady Athena. We helped her learn to walk, run, climb stairs, and play as every dog should. She became known to us as "Miss Tina's"- the doe eyed angel who spent most of her time under the bed, except to make regular rounds to make sure all was well, and to honor us with some unconditional love.
Her aggression toward strangers developed within a few months, but through strict training and high socialization we thought it was under control and improving. We dutifully had her spayed, and monitered her behavior very closely with our newborn son. I put my true inner concerns out of my mind because my husband loved her so, and I lacked the heart to voice any of my fears. She bit a friend of ours when he reached over the fence, but we chalked that up to "just protecting her family", plus the bite was superficial. "No big deal" we told ourselves. My concerns were swelling. By the age of 2 she spent 80% of her time under the bed when she was in the house, and all of her time outside time was spent aggressively barking at the perimeter of our privacy fence. She avoided our son mostly, but would nervously sniff at him occasionally. Her stranger aggression continued, and she growled at all male visitors. No one could go in our bedroom without us, and my mother in law was afraid to feed her when we went out of town. She became so jealous when we were petting her none of our other dogs could come near us without getting bitten, and she began to give our son "the eye". She was officially becoming mentally unstable as she grew into her full maturity, but we continued to overlook it because she was such an angel in our eyes. Those doe eyes melted our hearts every time she looked up at us.
Then one day it happened. She made good on her promise to attack any dog that came near me, and almost killed our 12 year old American Pit Bull Terrier. She bit me in the confusion, and once I got her off my senior dog she retreated under the bed. She would not even look at my son at this point, much less let him smooch on her as he did the other dogs. She would glare at him when I held him, holding her head low, then run under the bed. He had become competition for our affections, and she showed us how she took care of competition. The time had come.
As my vet was treating the severe neck wounds on my Pit Bull, I asked him how they handled elective euthanasia, and if he thought Athena was a candidate. I filled him in on the whole story. This was his response: "All of us [the staff at his office] are here because we love animals. We understand the love people have for their animals. But there is one truth that can never be compromised: as much as we love them, they always have to take the backseat when it comes to biting people without provocation. Injury or death to another person or even your own child is far too heavy of a consequence to pay for our love and loyalty to our dogs."
We laid Lady Athena -"Miss Tinas"- to restin our backyard the next afternoon, which was only two months ago. My husband took his angel in his arms -just as he did the day he became her daddy- to her final resting place. Only this time he wasn't silent with his head high as he held her close to him, now he was broken with grief and tears. I have only seen my husband cry twice in 5 years: The day our son was born, and the day we buried Miss Tinas.
