Sorry in advance--Long post with lots of details ahead. Never really got the chance to get all of this out and it's been eating away at me.
My freshman year of high school my garage caught on fire. My 2 year old Great Dane, Daisy, had been living in the garage for a few months (it was January, and she wouldn't have been in the garage if I had my way). She had a nice wooden dog house in the garage with a fluffy dog bed and food and water as well as a space heater that was safety approved. (Fire investigation later found a refrigerator was the cause of the fire, not the space heater).
My sister and I were getting ready for school in the morning when we noticed the garage was on fire and smoking really bad. I was on the phone with 911 before I was even clothed, and the police showed up before I was even off the line. There was barely time for me to throw on whatever clothes I could find, but I knew I couldn't leave my dog alone in the garage while it was literally on fire! The cop said he would take any measure necessary to make sure I didn't go back for her. It was horrible.
I live legitimately 10 seconds from the firehouse, so I assumed that they had adequate time to put the fire out and rescue my dog. It took eight firetrucks nearly an hour just to set up to start putting the fire out. As they arrived, we had heard no noise from my dog. I was scared that she had already passed and began crying/mourning over her. (possible trigger warning--kind of violent/sad) Not too long after, and the fire was really going now, I heard her barking and crying and banging on the metal garage door with her paws. At first I was happy because now they had time to try to save her, she wasn't dead after all! Then I started to realize I was listening to my dogs death. Every time I imagine how scared and how much pain she was in I cry so hard. The metal, the smoke, the fear, and the pure heat had to have been unbearable for her! She had no one there, her humans were not there for her and she was alone with the fire. She had a workbench she liked to hide under when she was naughty, and I like to think she possibly passed away there after smoke inhalation caused her to pass out. That's the only comforting thought I can come up with when thinking about what happened.
I felt like if I had just waited a few more seconds, I could have opened the side door to the garage and yelled for her to come. If I had just had the time and the sense to do that I think I could have saved my dogs life, as well as years of heartache.
Only a few months before this happened my chihuahua was ran over by a vehicle I was in, so the death of Daisy just made it even harder.
How can I possibly try to work through my feelings of guilt of being unable to save my dog and leaving her alone to her death? It's been a while, and I thought the pain would get a lot better with time. However, it's still very prevalent in my life. Any advice would be appreciated greatly, and thanks for reading :)
Submitted June 26, 2016 at 10:54AM by angissocool http://ift.tt/28V29dK Petloss
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