I am so sorry. You did the right thing, Jen.
I debated posted this, but this is my story to tell, and I hope it helps anyone struggling in this decision.
Last year, our JRT was going downhill about this time of the year. I felt her quality of life was just awful, but my husband thought because she ate, she was good but frankly, that is all she did. She would eat, sleep and suffer from incontinence daily. With the eating, he had to do a lot of playing around to get her to eat by changing foods, etc. We had so many tests run and all they could say was she was where she should be. 13-16 years is life expectancy for a JRT and when you hear of a JRT living beyond that, they are always male. Our girl had just turned 17-years-old. I could see the misery in her face every day. She would sit up and you could tell she was dizzy/shaking, sick, and generally miserable. She was deaf and legally blind. She stubbled often on her back gate, falling, so she had to be pulled around in a wagon to enjoy the outside, which she really didn't. She wasn't able to use stairs no more. I was ready to let her go, but my husband was not. We had a rough summer of touch and go, and I won't deny, an escalation between our difference of opinion. Our vet said that we were at a stage where we had to decide how much we wanted to tolerate and how much we would let her tolerate. Finally, in mid-Oct we had an emergency that resulted in a rush visit to the vet and her being put down.
You did the right thing. The thing I wanted to do in our own home. As a consolation prize, I did get to bring her dead body home, allow my other pets to visit her and bury her.
It is much easier to plan this, and I will forever hate that her last moments with us were gasping for air, after a night of seizures, and ended on a cold examination table at the vet's office.
