The Purest Love
You may have many dogs in your life, but for all their lives, they will only have you.
I'm sad.
When I'm sad, my mind goes in to overdrive, searching through both bitter and sweet memories to help me process reality and I write to get them out of my head.
My sweet little girl, a rescued Lab mix named Ruby, has made it to 16 - but her time is getting very short. We are going to need to make a decision very soon as she is getting weaker by the day.
In truth, she has not been the same since her brother Sammie, her littermate, passed away a little over two years ago. We could tell she missed him terribly. She looked for him for a very long time after he died. She would spend time looking out the floor to ceiling windows in our Park City condo searching for him. They slept on the same beds, in the same places, so his smell lingered for a while, but as all but the strongest memories, they eventually began to fade.
When our kids were in the process of looking and buying their houses, they moved in with us and that brought Ruby company in the form of Bruiser and Ellie, Bruiser leaving us last May. Now that my kids have homes of their own, Ellie, my daughter's dog, visits and sleeps over when she visits friends or does stuff for work.
Murphy joined our family a few weeks after Bruiser passed and has been a caring companion for Ruby - he's half Pittie and half Labrador, and since he joined us, he has bonded with Ruby and watches over her.
A month or so ago Ruby started having seizures, The day they started, I slept downstairs on the couch so Ruby wouldn't need to climb the stairs to our bedroom - it was a fairly sleepless night. The seizures disoriented her for a few hours after they were over and that caused her to be restless. Every time I heard her stir, I was up to see what was going on. We have motion sensing lights in our kitchen, so every time Ruby roamed, the lights would pop on - but she finally settled down and I dozed off.
I was awakened around 2:30 AM by Murph pulling on my arm. I thought it was just him wanting attention, but as I came to my senses, I heard the most soul wrenching howl coming from outside. It was plaintive and weak, but I knew immediately it was Ruby.
Ruby had wandered outside (we have doggie doors) to go the bathroom and had either stumbled or had another seizure and fallen onto the top of our canvas pool cover and couldn't climb back out. It wasn't that steep but she was just too weak - she had broken through the thin ice and was lying on her stomach in freezing water (there wasn't a lot, I had pumped it out the afternoon before) but it was about 25 degrees outside, so it was enough to be really dangerous for a weak dog.
Murphy led me to the spot where she fell in. I ran out in my Under Armor shorts and a tee shirt, and before I knew it I was laying down on the pool coping and stretching across the cover to pull her out. Murph watching every move. She was so cold and exhausted she could barely move. I carried her wet body back inside and dried her off, putting her in front of the fireplace to warm up while I stuck a couple of blankets in our dryer to warm them up.
I have no doubt she would have frozen to death if Murph had not yanked on my arm.
After I put the warm blankets over her, she went to sleep and Murph took up a guard position next to her bed and began the first watch.
We love our Sweet Baby Dog, but it is nearing time for us to let her go to join Sammie and Bruiser across the Rainbow Bridge. She lost her hearing about two years ago, but that just caused us to pet and hug her more, so I know she knows we love her.
It is an awful, heart wrenching decision and yet helping her go is the kindest thing.
I guess two things really can be true at the same time.
Knowing that we gave her the sixteen best years any dog has ever had is little consolation - but we did. She has been on a real journey since my son Rob and I saw her fuzzy little puppy body running across the enclosure and letting out peanut sized barks, seemingly to get our attention at the adoption event.
She knew then we were family.
We went after one puppy and came home with two. I couldn't take his sister and leave Sammie alone - so we adopted both. They began life together, and were never apart until Sammie died - and now they are about to be together again.
She and Sammie loved to run in the snow, punching their noses in snow drifts to see what they could find. I'm so unbelievably sad for what is coming but it makes me happy to think that her spirit will be free of her sick body to join Sammie - who has been waiting for her so they can run through the snow together once again.
As they say, the happiest day is when a puppy comes to live with you. The saddest is when the time comes for them to go, leaving just memories of the purest love.
I hope I get to see them all together again.
68 years old with something like 15 dogs in my life.... I get it, and send my regrets. best.............Brad
ps... proud companions of 3 different Lab mixes... wonderful dogs!
Trivia item... black dogs are the most frequently euthanized by shelters... people just won't adopt them. But we have had 3 of them, all wonderful.
How beautiful and sad. Dog love is so pure. No matter how great a life you give them it’s little consolation when they leave you.
The memories can help dull the pain. But it never goes away.
RIP Tyler 1996