I lost a friend last week. Dakota was a black-and-white springer spaniel who was as sweet a dog as any I’ve known. He was a joyous garden glove thief and gift unwrapper. He loved pasta and chicken strips and hunting up treats hidden around the house. He liked riding in the car and sometimes rolling in things that didn’t smell as good to his owners as they did to him. Back in the day he ran on his farm as hard and long and far as he could; as he grew older, he applied his hunting instincts to finding the softest sofa cushions in the house. He did his job of being a good boy as well as ever it could be done, and his owners will miss him terribly for a long time to come.

And I was sorry for them that when his time came, they had to make that decision that so many of us as pet owners hope we never have to face. It’s one of the hardest jobs in the world – making that call to the veterinarian and trying, as our throats close up and our eyes spill over with tears, to say the words “it’s time.”

By making that most humane decision to put our sick or suffering companion animals to sleep, most of us inevitably feel that we have “killed” our best friends, or that we have somehow done something horrible and cruel for which we should never be forgiven. We struggle with even so much as the thought, and then we struggle to make the call, and afterward the guilt can be overwhelming. Sometimes we can’t even talk about it with others because we believe they might judge us either for being too hasty in coming to the decision to end our pet’s life, or for being too slow to make the call and causing the animal to suffer needlessly.

The truth is, though, that if and when we come to that most difficult decision, it’s probably the right one, and we’ve probably done it in the right amount of time. No one should be enslaved by the opinions of those who have never lived with our pet and can’t accurately judge our friend’s quality of life. No one knows as well as those of us who love our companions and see them every day.

Years ago I lived with a wondrous Abyssinian cat named BJ, with whom I was especially close. Each evening BJ waited for me atop the desk next to the door and demanded that I bend down low enough for him to rub the top of his head against the top of mine while he idled his motor as loudly as he could. Whenever the doorbell rang he ran out, growling, even as my other cat took off in the opposite direction for the safety of the closet. BJ left toys in my shoes, and he insisted on drinking water only if it was running fresh from the bathroom tap. More than once he nearly got toothpaste spit on his head as we both maneuvered around for sink space.

Then one day he threw up. Several times. He did it again the next day, and the next, and the next. It quickly became clear that this was neither hairballs nor an upset stomach. The blood tests said diabetes, so we started him on insulin. The vomiting continued. The next blood test and x-rays came back normal. His appetite waned, and his weight dropped. We force-fed him and he rallied for a day or two, but then the same problem resurfaced, even with soft-strained baby foods. His eyes lost their sparkle, and his elegant brown-and-black ticked fur went dull. He stopped coming to the door when I came home from work. When I took him to bed, his little paws were ice cold. He didn’t want to be in bed with me, anyway. He headed off to the basement.

That was when I knew he was no longer the BJ who loved the life we had together.

I can assure you that the hour before the appointed time with the veterinarian is the longest and the shortest and without question the most miserable. That morning I cried and I second-guessed, I held him and I left him to his own devices. I hated myself and I cursed fate, and I shook my fist at the specter of cancer, which this undoubtedly was. And all the same the clock’s hand inched closer and closer to the 9, and I finally told the other animals to say their goodbyes and I then took my BJ for his last ride in the carrier.

My veterinarian is a wise man. He told me that whatever decision I made would be the right one, because it was made with love and caring. He put BJ under and did a quick exploratory to make sure that the X-rays hadn’t missed something, but indeed the culprit was stomach cancer. Please don’t wake him, I said. Just do it while he’s under the anesthetic.

And that was it. It was over.

I still miss that little boy just about every day, and I look at my family of pets now and hope for each of them that they will go peacefully in their sleep, but that’s pretty unlikely. I know that when the time comes, they will count on me to make the right decision for them. They will count on me to be strong enough to help them along, to give the OK to release them from bodies that no longer work, that are more prisons to their spirits than vehicles to help them enjoy life.

And I will never ask them to face it alone. I will be there with each of them, just as my friends were with Dakota as they helped him across that final threshold.