For those of you who have read my blog for a long time, you have seen me write about and post pictures of my Newfoundland dogs Tasha and Daisy. For those of you who know me, I’m one of those “wierd dog people” – they are more than pets to me, way more.
On Sunday as I was about to head to the airport for TEchEd, I got a call from the place where I had boarded Tasha, the 14 1/2 year old (very very old for a Newfie). SHe had taken a very bad turn overnight – I think gave up her raison d’etre because I had left her there. I rescheduled my flight and RIch and I went to be with her and knew it was time, so we put her to sleep. She devoured a startling amount of cookies and turkey jerkey in her last minutes and right up to the last moment, was scrounging around the floor for crumbs, which gave us a needed laugh. I think she was trying to disprove the theory that you can’t take it with you. And the fact that she was very busy eating was a nice reminder that she wasn’t upset or worried – well, just worried about not being able to get cookies any more.
I went to TechEd early on Tuesday morning, leaving behind our other very old (13 1/2) girl, Daisy who was very depressed about Tasha and not eating. Daisy has had a problem with her esophagus passage shrinking and over the past few months this has caused her some big trouble a few times. Rich did an amazing job with her while I was gone, putting food in the blender, soaking it a lot, discovering that she is a big fan of Ensure. I got home very late on Thursday night. She had a very bad day and a very very bad night on Friday. SO yesterday, knowing that this wasn’t something that could be fixed, we made the difficult decision (moreso because we had just put Tasha down) to let her go as well.
The decision was a no brainer for each dog, but especially difficult for me becasue I was so close to them and I lost them both within one week. And of course, I’m feeling very sorry for myself missing my girls and being in a suddenly very empty and quiet house.
But this isn’t a tragedy. The dogs had amazingly long lives and great ones and we were really lucky to have them with us for so long. It’s just sad to lose your friends, as we all know.
A good cure, of course is a new puppy (and one of my mom’s males sired a litter of 8 that was just born yesterday — only few hours after saying goodbye to Daisy), but since we have been nursing these old dogs for a number of years, we’ve decided to take a little break before we jump in again. We’ll see how long that promise lasts, though! 🙂
I’m going to leave the comments off of this post.
Sign up for my newsletter so you don't miss my conference & Pluralsight course announcements!