Thanks for the kind words, folks, they mean a lot. I'm feeling a bit better today. Yesterday was rough not only because of having to do it, but Jake was also laying in the kitchen sort of barking and I wasn't sure if he was in pain or what... He couldn't get up and we'd kind of thought he'd had a stroke because he seemed unable to use his back legs. The vet told Mom that sometimes they just lose control of them when they get older. :/
Ryan had some questions about how the whole thing worked; I explained to him that they would put Jake to sleep with special medicine and that they do that to humans, too, when they have surgery and that that part doesn't hurt at all, that Jake wouldn't be able to feel -anything- at all, and that then they would give him another kind of medicine to make his heart not work, and that he wouldn't be able to feel that either. And we talked about how Jake was hurting now and we will miss him but that he would be, well, better off not hurting and unable to get up any more. Later on, I realized that I neglected to mention that they don't give people medicine to make their heart not work any more. But then, he didn't question it, either. I hope that was an okay way to explain it to him. I didn't want him thinking that Jake will just never wake up because I don't want him confused about sleep/death.
It's funny how the other dogs seemed curious about him just laying there but also seemed respectful. Then again, they've always seemed to understand that Jake could be a bit playful when he wanted but when he was done, they knew he meant it. To me he's always been the Daddy Dog. Bell (our black lab that lived eighteen years - EIGHTEEN YEARS!) was always sort of the Mama around the place, and Jake was always sort of the Daddy - the old man of the place - excepting the fact that he was younger than she and I always thought it was her who taught him to fetch. :) They used to lay under the walnut tree and chow down on the walnuts out there. (Even after Bell had long worn down all her teeth to almost nothing, she'd chew walnuts.)
I guess the vet and staff were waiting on Mom to show up when she got there - he tried to get mom to let him carry Jake and she wouldn't. (My Mom is a lot more torn up than I expected her to be; it was hard enough for us to make the decision and I know it's really hard to take your pet actually to the vet to be put down.) Our vet BECAME our vet when we first adopted Jake from the humane society for twenty dollars and he came with a free neuter-ing? from that particular vet... you wouldn't believe how cute Jake was - not quite all the way yellow lab, with a bit of extra skin and these huge brown eyes that just looked so sweet. He was very definitely a Jake dog and there was no way we weren't taking him home that day.
A little Jake story: Last summer we were all at Mom's; Cody, Tim, Darrin, me, Chaz maybe, Mom, Dad, Ryan and we'd all been outside playing and it started to storm. We'd cooked burgers on the grill, and several of us were sitting on the porch eating. Jake, who was even then pretty slow getting around, came up on the porch to sit out of the rain (and also because he was scared of thunder and other loud noises, I assume,) he laid down on the porch, and after a few minutes got up, stole the hamburger off Tim's plate and was eating it before Tim noticed. I thought it was funny because he really was slow; and nobody could even come close to scolding him because we all felt he deserved it, after all the work it took him to get it. He also nabbed some pretzels Ryan was eating out of a cup in the exact same way one day.
I hope he knew how much we loved him and how entertaining he was, and I'm glad to know he's no longer suffering. Rest in peace, Daddy Dog.