When I worked as a nurse, I volunteered to work the Cancer/AIDS floor. It was difficult work for sure. Hard to see the patients lose orientation daily, waste away to nothing, AIDS patients with more and more purple lesions, and loved ones crying at the bedside. On the graveyard shift, we had the unfortunate luxury of a little more time to actually get to know the patients. But the one thing I learned was to try and stay objective. Be friendly and caring, but keep those emotions at a distance because there was always a chance that when you came in for your shift that one of your patients would be dead.

Today, I don't have the option of emotional distance. At 4 o'clock EST time, I will drive the mile long distance to the vet and whisper in Yasha's ear that he's momma's pretty baby-dog while they slowly put him to sleep.

Right now, as I type this, the tears are coming whether I want them to or not. While I could never leave him to go through that alone, the guilt is hitting me full force. I feel like such a traitor.

The bad part is that many days are good days, but more often than not, they're bad. He had seizures last Thurs and Fri, and then Sat and Sun he had many instances of disorientation. Usually, as the day goes on, he wears down and you can see the sadness in his brown eyes.

He's been with me since a puppy. At four weeks old, I would lay on the couch with him against my chest so he could hear my heartbeat. He immediately bonded with me as if I were his real mother. He is always by my side. If I'm in the living room, he's never more than a few feet from me. If I move to the kitchen to cook, he moves to within a few feet from me. If I'm at the computer, he's at my feet. He waits outside the bathroom door for me, and when I go upstairs, even for a minute, he's right there with me. If I'm in bed, and Mark takes him out in the morning, as soon as he comes back in, he bounds clumsily up the stairs, busts open the bedroom door to make sure I'm still there. Then he waits in the room with me until I get up. He's my White Shadow.

Lately, when my husband and I go out for the evening, he works himself into such a state because of the separation, that the next day he either seizures, or has diarrhea and vomiting.

I will miss my lovely Yasha Ilya, my beautiful, playful, rough and tumble white wolf.

No creature, human or otherwise, has ever loved me so much, so completely, so unconditionally. And no creature, human or otherwise, ever will again.

Today will be one of the hardest days of my life.