Goodnight Reilly: 2014-2023

If you’ve been reading my blogs for any length of time (does anyone read blogs anymore?) You know that I’ve got an Irish wolfhound named Reilly. Not only is he featured in my author bio pic but I’ve blogged about him several times.

This is the hardest blog to write about Reilly…because it’s the final one.

Irish wolfhounds generally are considered to have a lifespan of 6-8 years. I’d always hoped I’d get 10 years or more with Reilly. But at 9 years and 4 months, we had to make the hardest call.

You never want to see your friend and family member suffer, but at the same time, if they still have life in them, you want them to enjoy it. At the end, the lower back paralysis that we were able to partially correct with surgery when he was 5 came back, and he was losing the ability to control his hind legs again; knuckling and folding his feet, shaky and unable to control himself. Sometimes we had to help him stand multiple times a day. We’d also spent many rounds trying to knock out an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection in his bladder. It had become a sort of morbid race of which would kill him first, the infection or paralysis.

At Reilly’s 9-year check-up, our vet had already recommended that we should look into at-home euthanasia in the near future. But as much as he was struggling, he still ate, drank, loved his family, and tried to play with our other dog, Drax, as much as he was capable. But there comes a point that you have to ask yourself, are you keeping him around for him…or for yourself? So at the end of last week we called out a vet for a quality of life assessment, and the prognosis was what we already knew, but needed to hear. So today, after a breakfast of chicken strips and spending time on the floor with him, he went to sleep in my arms for the last time.

Goodbye Reilly. You saw me through a lot in your nearly ten years with me. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend. I’m going to miss you for the rest of my days.