Boots has gone collar free

Thank you everyone for your kind words.
Its been very difficult as I can not find major mistakes I made before or up until diagnosis, and now know almost 50% of dogs are diagnosed somewhat by accident during an annual or other medical issue.
And there is still an illogical feeling that I failed to protect or look out for him as was my duty.
Logic does not always overcome emotion apparently.
I think I've overcome that in the main, and now I have less and less feelings of deep grief and anhedonia.

I can completely understand why some people feel almost traumatized after losing their best furry friend, and never own one again.
In my case, I am holding off to let nature takes its course with me, and to insure I am not in a sense just replacing Boots.

I almost always have a comment in my posts that relate to this or that medical study, so I have another one that I've actually used recently and does seem to work.
A large Psych study was done to look at what seems to be an increase in recent years of mental issues in the general public.
Long story short, they seem to have uncovered a behavioral pattern that invovled Executive Function, Ego/Id/Super Id IIRC and people who spend significant amounts of time online, on their phone.

At its essence, people are usually in 1 of 2 states, Active or Idle.
Active is anytime your are really focused on something you are doing, or phyiscally active where your senses are streaming a lot of physical movement data or coordinating tasks, manipulating your arms/legs, etc.
When in this State, most of your brain activity is involved in proprioception, body movement for tasks, etc, and negative thoughts are basically bandwidth limited and thus less likely to cause negative rumination and the like.

The alternative is the Idle state, which is explained as when you are sitting, lying, or otherwise not using much of your brain for physical movement and assocaited actions.
This would include sitting on a couch watching tv, scrolling on your phone, lying in bed, etc.
In this idle state, distinctly different sections of the brain are shown under functional MRI to 'light up', and any negative thoughts, anxiety, and likely greiving, will tend to become ruminant, circular, and self-amplifying.

The study went on to describe notable figures in history who fought this through simply staying physically busy, as for example W. Churchill laid bricks. Further study showed that when they prescribed physical activity for people, it worked almost as well as anti-depressants.

As an N=1, I can anectdotally attest to the fact that when I was feeling the worst, simply going out any working in the back yard or doing something physical that took my attention did seem to alleviate some of my distress and seem to help 'reset' me.
There is an old saying which more properly noted is thus: "An idle brain is the devil's workshop".
Another is when people tell others to 'cool off, go take a walk'.
Both of these sayings seem to prove that while the technical reasons where not known at the time, previous generations were aware that negative or ruminating thoughts could potentially be alleviated simply through physical activity.
Hopefully someone reading this in the future going through what may seem like a time of gray sadness with little hope for future happness, can consider giving some physical activity when possible or it seems the worst and find some relief.
Grief for some seems to require more time than what is considered 'normal'.
I would not be surprised to find out it is not only mental, by actual physical changes in some neurons/axions/etc, which would be a physical/time dependent process.
If you can give yourself more time, and reduce some of the deep grief during that time as I believe I have done, it could be one way you can take an actual action to help yourself.

Again, appreciate everyone's kind words and support, and listening to my non-medically proven suppostions.

Pics seems broken, https://postimg.cc/21Rp42yz
 
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Totally makes sense. In short: get up off your butt and do SOMETHING. I call it the "hamster wheel" when I suddenly find myself going around and around with negative type thoughts, often in the middle of the night.
 
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Totally makes sense. In short: get up off your butt and do SOMETHING. I call it the "hamster wheel" when I suddenly find myself going around and around with negative type thoughts, often in the middle of the night.
I read a book by somebody (Jung or Adler, maybe ... I don't recall!) who referred to this as logotherapy.
 
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