I miss my Princess

The feeling I have now is the feeling I had when we lost Michelle in 2000. (Michelle was our family's first dog.) But this time, it's a bit different because I still have Brandon and Skittles and the house is not completely quiet like it was when we lost Michelle...

This may sounds weird but I miss cleaning up Bashee's pee and poo....and I also miss hearing her tags hitting each other as she walks in the hallway in the middle of the night. I miss her stinkiness too...

You know what else? The fact that I know Bash will die soon since she was getting a bit older.... and I've been trying to prepare myself since she was 10 years old. Someone had told my mommy that her Shih Tzu died when the doggie was 12. So, I tried to prepare myself. BUT you can never be really prepared. Somehow, I had hoped for her to make it to 16 years old and hoped that she was going to last a little longer. But her dying so suddenly threw me off guard. And her dying while I was away made it even more harder. But somehow, I think she knew it was the best. If she had died in front of me, I would be thinking about the process over and over again, wondering what I could've done to prevent it.

And also, cuz she wasn't really sick, I felt like it was too sudden. Maybe I just didn't notice? I took her for a physical exam back in July, before we left for Hawaii. They said she was healthy for her age. And for her to die the way she did, it made me wonder if I neglected her and not realized the subtle changes with her. But Mr. JB said the night before she passed, everything was normal. She got up to eat and walked around in the hallway. She peed and pooed in the middle of the night too. So, I don't know. I wonder if she suffered in anyway....although superficially, she sounded like she didn't. Makes me wonder what the cause of her death was....

The house is quiet at 3 in the morning, when my Princess usually wakes up to pee in her crate. I don't hear sound of her stepping on the pee pads and I sure don't hear her growling either. Oh how I long to hear her paws on the plastic and to smell her stinky ears. I miss her very much.