Why Didn't I...

I slept most of the day yesterday. I just do not want to be here. I'm too tired and everything is too hard to do. I cancelled going to a drop in writing class today, because I just don't want to see anyone.

Yesterday, as I tried to sleep, my puppy would curl up beside me on the bed. The bad thoughts would come. I tried really hard to speak lovingly to my puppy, tell him how much I loved him, pet him, feel how soft and velvety his floppy ears feel, sense the warmness of him laying next to me. I tried every time the thoughts came to fill my mind with thoughts of love, and caring, but the thoughts both wouldn't go away, and then began to challenge me:

Why didn't you get your oldest niece to call 911? The police would have stopped the dog attack?

Why didn't you take a stick and poke the attacking dog/s in the eyes, or ears, or some other vulnerable place? That would have stopped the attack.

Why didn't you run up to the house and grab the axe? Why didn't you hit the attackers with the axe? That would have stopped the attack.

Honestly, even if I had the presence of mind to think of those things during the attack, I do not think I could have maimed or hurt the attackers. I didn't want the dogs hurt, I just wanted the attack to stop. I couldn't have killed, or maimed them, anymore than I could permanently harm a human. When I was hitting them, and throwing rocks at them I was trying to stun them, or distract them so they let go of the puppy.

Yet beyond the initial playback of the attack, over and over in my mind, is the feeling and playback of criticisms in my head that I did not do enough to protect and help the puppy; that as a caregiver I did not live up to my responsibilities to protect my sister's children and her dogs.

Some of it was my fear. The dogs were huge and powerful Husky/Akita/Wolf cross dogs weighing appox. 150 lbs each. Also, the fence where the attack was taking place was short...only 4 feet tall. The dogs were almost as tall. I was scared they would jump the fence and attack me, or grab me if I tried to go into their yard and haul them off the puppy. My first thought should have been to protect the ones in my care. I should have done more.

I think the thoughts keep coming, because in my life I never have been afraid of dogs. I always felt I would be in charge if a dog became vicious. I had been around large police dogs my whole life. There was a sense of complete panic and helplessness during the attack that I cannot get over. It has affected my sense that I have the ability to protect my puppy. I love him so much I feel terror that I might lose him because of a mistake I might make.