Sunday, August 01, 2004
Hard to Say Goodbye
| Blogging has been a little light for me lately. Wed. night, I had to have my dog put down, which was incredibly hard. Rusty was an incredible dog, and a wonderful friend. We got him at a humane society 14 years ago, after he'd been a stray for about 5 weeks. He was about 1 or 2 years old at the time, already trained, and we think pure bread Springer Spaniel. A better pound dog could not have been found if you had searched the entire country. He was incredibly healthy for most of his life, which made his arthritis towards the end hard to cope for him. Despite how things had progressed, he still always thought he was a puppy who could jump around and do anything. I think it was hard for him the last year to leap in the direction he wanted, and now fall short of his goal.
Of course his only real heath problem before had been about five or six years ago when he through out his back jumping on the dining room table. Yes, he did jump on the dining room table (without the assistance of a chair mind you). If I was outside, mowing the lawn or something, he would jump up and watch out the back window. Best view of the back yard I guess. We knew his back was all healed when one day I looked in through the window and saw him back up on the table, wagging his little tail. I always scolded him for doing it when I caught him, but I laughed too because he always had the silliest grin on his face. We knew his arthritis was getting worse when he stopped doing that permanently, even though my Mom was kind of happy about it since she didn't like him up there. |  |
| He could speak, even though I could never get him to do it on command. The one word he knew how to say was Hello. I don't have a recording unfortunately, but we do have first hand accounts of him saying it, not that it really matters. We know he said it, and that's all that counts. Usually he would say it when one of us came home. We'd walk in the door, and there he'd be in the kitchen saying this loud howling hello (two syllables, really!) For most of his life, he was a 60 pound lap dog. For some strange reason, he didn't understand why his large size should keep him out of a chair when we were already in it. Here are some of my favorite pictures of him living it up in our laps. | |
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| Rusty and Me (Please ignore the yellow sweat pants, I was 12). | Rusty and Mom |
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| Rusty and Uncle Tom | Rusty and my brother in law Shannon |
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| Rusty and Aunt Carolyn | Rusty and my sister Janet |
| I'll miss you old friend. | |
About Me
Name: Nick
Home: Wauwatosa, WI, United States
I'm a Software Consultant in the Milwaukee area. Among various geeky pursuits, I'm also an amateur triathlete, and enjoy rock climbing. I also like to think I'm a political pundit.
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