Saying Goodbye to a dear friend

May 23rd, we had to say goodbye to our dog of 12.5 years.  Silas had one eye removed last summer due to a disease which led to glaucoma, which resulted in much pain for Silas.  We knew that his other eye would at some point also go blind.  From December to May, I gave him eye drops 3x/day and they seem to work at keeping down the pressures in his eye.  However, at some point they stopped working and he went permanently blind.  He was obviously in discomfort and we knew that our only course of treatment was to get his other eye removed. We had already decided that we weren't going to do that.  He was deaf and it would've been a tremendous liability to himself, the children and anyone driving by, if a blind and deaf dog wandered to the road.  Nonetheless it was hard to say goodbye to a member of our family who was so integrated into our lives.  Interestingly, almost all the photos we have of him are taken by the children.  And often, he is just a background feature, just part of the fabric of the photos because he was part of the family.