One of the hardest parts of the whole ordeal was the fact that I’d just been through it a few months earlier with my 12-year-old chow mix, Henny. The two of them were the first pets I’d lost on my own, as an adult. Growing up, my family had cats, but my parents shielded me from the hard stuff, the death stuff. I grieved for my childhood cats from a safe distance; I did not stare into their eyes as they went.My relationship with Henny had been more complicated than the idyllic soul union I’d experienced with Joon, who pretty much considered me her mother since the day I adopted her at five months old. I’d taken in Henny as a 6-year-old rescue dog, and though she was profoundly sweet and mellow, she was also riddled with issues, such as severe separation anxiety that caused her to furiously scratch up my doors and windows. She was also incontinent — she wore disposable doggie diapers for years — and suffered from failing kidneys and terrible arthritis.By the end, Henny had lost interest in food, and she’d stumble often, sometimes tripping face-first into her food bowl. One day, my aging-hippie dog-walker mused that if he were me, he’d have her euthanized that day. I clucked about his presumptuousness and held fast for another month or so, until I noticed my poor pup had stopped wagging her tail at all.My mom and I took Henny for one last, long walk in the woods she’d loved. I took photos of her walking proudly into the green distance, and then the vet came over and gave her the shot on my living-room rug.After losing two of my three pets in quick succession (I still have one cat, Batman, confusedly holding down the fort), I succumbed to shell-shock. All those stages of grief Elisabeth Kübler-Ross talks about? They’re still playing out for me, at different times, on different days. I halfheartedly trudge through as much as I can, but I worry the full impact hasn’t hit me yet.Aside from a sharp, constant longing to see my dead companions, the most persistent feeling I’ve experienced is guilt. Because the notion of putting an animal you adore “to sleep” makes absolutely no sense. It flies in the face of everything right and okay — a direct foil for your base instinct to love and protect these pets. I haven’t stopped agonizing over that last hour at the vet with Joon and those last moments with Henny in my living room. Did I wait too long, or not long enough?