My best friend of 13 years is diagnosed with acute heart failure :(

After having lived a very healthy 12 years with me (I got her when she was 12 weeks old), my dog had a very scary experience where I had to rush her to the pet hospital. It was in the middle of the night and while there were no cars on the road, the 17 minutes to get her there was the longest of my life. By the time we got there, I had them on speaker phone and they rushed out to pull her from my arms and started emergency medications. After a long, long night of waiting in the parking lot, the vet said she had miraculously made it through and she was able to go home in the evening with me.

This was October of 2020. She is now on hospice care with three kinds of heart medications, and they originally said they did not expect her to live past Christmas. Well my little pup is a fighter and just celebrated her 13th birthday!

She is not allowed to jump onto things, walk stairs or play fetch etc, so we had to modify some things for her. While her diagnosis is super scary and I know there will come a day where I need to do what is best for her, as much as I never want to let her go, I am just feeling so blessed for every day that she is still with me; eating, wagging, snuggling, taking little walks and so on.

I have never had a senior pet before, let alone one that is fatally ill, so I have no idea how to prepare for her last day or decisions that come with it. I am wondering if anyone has been in the same situation before and have any advise on how to cope with loss of your pet?