A good life ...

A great dog.

Madeline J. Dog
April 15, 1995 - July 27, 2011

One, short

We returned from our week in Maine last night having left Annabel with her grandmother for another five days of fun in the sun.

Figures: Halfway home it started to rain.

The hugeness of leaving my baby for a week really crept up on me.

Even though we've talked to her no less than five times in the last eight hours, it just feels weird without her here.

Kinda like that how it feels when you loose a tooth and your tongue keeps finding the empty socket where your tooth had been.

Which Annabel told us all about this morning.

The tooth - a big, front one - fell out right before swim class.

Thanks to her uncle Dobbs for photo documentation!

Goodnight, little Squeak

Cheshire cat, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

I am not a cat person.

But I am a tolerant person; and as a tolerant person I must admit that there are cats, which, from time to time make me rethink my aversion.

Squeek, our porch-lounging neighbor's cat, was one of those felines.

She was the anti-cat.

A sweet little calico, she got her name not only from her penchant to 'talk' but also the timber of her voice. She was neither timid nor feisty. She was friendly toward the children, even the tiny screamer who likes to pull tails. She greeted us every time we came home, rolled onto her belly in front of our path and begged for affection. Even if we were carrying groceries we had to stop and give her a pat. She just seemed to have a smile in whatever she was doing.

But last night she was hit by a car driving through our "driveway."

She didn't survive.

We are all saddened by her loss, especially Annabel who loved her more than pretty much any animal she's ever known. Even Maggie.

Goodnight, little Squeak. We will miss you.

Another cause for concern

Do you remember when I said this about the last days of our beloved Maggie?

Well, had you been living in our house at the time or speaking with me in person, I would have told you "it was the strangest thing" the way she just stopped eating.

I would have told you that while she wouldn't touch her food bowls all of a sudden, she would still drool over table food and gobble down pancakes or homemade cookies or even the hard dog biscuits we'd been refraining from giving her because the tumor in her lung was pressing on her esophagus.

Well, guess what she'd been eating since August?

Goodnight, baby dog ...

At 5 p.m. this evening a friend and veterinarian made a house call, and we said goodbye to our sweet dog Maggie for the last time. She was 13 years old.

She was our first baby.

She was not in pain.

She stopped eating almost completely two days ago but she had not gotten lethargic.

It was time.

Last night she spent a lot of time standing in the snow in the backyard just staring off into the distance. She did not sleep where she usually does, at Annabel's bedside, but in the hallway between the kitchen and the "great outdoors." I went to check on her at 4 a.m. and found her in the yard again looking off into the distance.

I had a dream a few days ago that we'd taken her to the vet, telling her the vet would make her better but knowing it was impossible. Her eyes were almost human; relieved and willing it to be true. It broke my heart.

We were never going to be ready to let her go or say goodbye. But we knew it would be best to do it before discomfort or pain took hold.

It was such a wonderful thing, for us, that her last moment on this Earth would be at home and not in a clinic that she had tolerated dutifully but a place that always made her shiver fearfully. This friend traveled more than an hour to do that for us when our vet would not, and we are indebted to him.

He adminstered the last treatment downstairs in front of the woodstove with Maddy laying next to her. She went peacefully as if she just fell asleep. Jed wrapped her in a warm blanket and buried her in the backyard under the honeysuckle.

She will now be a part of this place just as she was once a part of us.

You are a good dog, Maggie. We love you.