My girl is gone. She has heart failure and takes prescription medicine 4 X a day. Whoever has her doesn't know that. The thought of her suffering without her meds is killing me. I have been having bad dreams about it. I feel so guilty that she got out without a collar/tags on her. She has been gone since July 17. She was still playful and frisky; she did cough often, but she was doing so well! We went through so much to get her on the right combination of medicines. I was so not looking forward to the day we eventually would have to put her down, but now I long for it because I could have kept her from suffering once her quality of life became too low. Now, I will never know if she suffered a slow death. I cannot kept up her good quality of life. I cannot hold her or sleep with her or play with her or feed her (eating is her favorite hobby). I bought her for my son as a Christmas present 5 1/2 years ago. I have never loved a dog so much in all my life, and I am 45. I put flyers everywhere and bought an Amber Alert lost pet service that sends out info about lost pets. I have done all I can, after the fact. I am always a day late and a dollar short when it comes to protecting Star and keeping her safe. I wish I had kept the collar on her; I took it off because I didn't want it to hurt her neck/throat/trachea cartilage, which I read could happen in dogs with her condition. I still feel like I should have been able to prevent this - that I could have done more, like microchipped her. Anyway, thank you for this group and letting me share my pain with other pet owners who are grieving, too.