There is nothing better than time of “roughhousing” with my kids. I love making them laugh through playing around. We also enjoy the times of sitting in bed while I read to them and even talking about various subjects. I even did that tonight with my daughters, but when bed time hit, the news that we gave earlier in the night turned the giggling, laughing voices into tears. Parenting isn’t always fun and tonight was one of those nights.

It’s time to flashback. Last November, we plunged into the world of being a pet owner. We adopted a seven month old mix breed dog that initially had been told to us that she had mange (a skin disease) but it was to be easily curable. We were gullible new pet owners who were smitten by the cuteness of our new puppy, Ruby. After some time, Ruby wasn’t getting better so I took her to our veterinarian. He did a wonderful job assessing her and we began treating the mange as well as a few other small items. Over time, we continued to work on her treatments and test only to find out that she had demodectic mange, which is an odd disease for a dog of her age and size. By this time Ruby is about 10 months old and 60 lbs. Her age and size, under normal circumstances, should have fought off the pericyte but she just couldn’t beat it.  Fast forward to today, Ruby is now a year and a half old and over 70 pounds of sweet joy, yet she is still fighting the disease. We began looking at next steps to her care and it quickly became something that was outside of the scope of how we could treat her with this condition. The hard decision was made to search out someone who could adopt her who could focus on her treatment; hopefully awesome bring her back to health.

This is the place where the night goes downhill even more. We felt as though we had reached the place where our kids needed to know the decision we had reached. Tears were shed, hearts were hurt and the kids were brought into the full decision that we had to make. They understood WHY the decision was made but even in the steps to find good health for Ruby, they made it apparent that they didn’t want to let her go. This is the part of parenting that isn’t fun, introducing your child to pain and loss.

While these times are terrible painful, it is also full of key moments to teach your kids about how you are dealing with it, how you might have experienced this before and simply being honest about your own reflections. These are the teachable moments that we get the chance to run to or run away from. I believe that it is this type of moment that will determine if they come to you in other deep conversations that they need to have.

For now, the decision was hard, but I know that we will find ourselves back to the place of dog ownership and the kids will be happy dog owners once again. We just continue to try being good parents.

Parenting isn’t always fun, but it is sure full of impact and rewarding.

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