R.I.P. Clare

[MikeP]

Sorry for your loss Scott. It's heartbreaking considering what faithful, loving companions they are. I have a little Boston Terrier who is so far blessed with good health but I dread that day when it comes.

[birdmadgirl]

Awwww... I'm so sorry, guys. What beautiful dogs you both had!

I've always wanted to have a dog and have that special connection with it. I think what holds me back, though, is that I know the utter devastation I'll face if something ever happens to them. I know that's just part of it, but I can't go there yet. Maybe someday.

*hugs*

[CounterCircular]

Rubellan, So sorry to hear about Clare. We had a black lab for many years and finally had to have her put to sleep about 6 years ago. It was very hard, like we were losing one of our kids. My wife and children and I were right there together with Sage at the vets when they injected her. She was so calm before the injection, and I sensed she really knew something was up. We all just gave her all our attention and hugged her and then when she was injected by the vet in her vein (I guess) in her right front leg, she just wimpered a little and seemed to peacefully drift off. Everyone was crying and our kids wrote little rememberance notes about Sage and let them drift to the skies in helium-filled balloons. Rarely a day goes by when I don't think about Sage, and what a GRRRRREAT family member she was. I haven't been able to bring myself to get another dog to this day.

I know this is a rough time for you, hang in there and remember all the great times you shared. You'll always have those memories. It's true dogs are man's best friend - so loving and loyal and forgiving of all our shortcomings with them. All they know how to do is love their owners.

[hexicon]

Sorry about the doggies, Rubellan and Blir.

My senior kitty (the one whose self-inflicted Brazilian bikini wax has been documented on this site) is starting to get up there, at age 17. He's been with me my entire adult life and when the time comes it will be very hard to see him go. We didn't wind up having any kids and our kitties are our family.

[BffloGrl85]

Rubellan, the pictures tell so much more than any words could express. Thank you for sharing Clare with us.

[cookie]

I am so sorry to hear about your loss Rubellan and Blir. I lost my dog at 16 years of age a little over a year ago and I can relate to all the emotions you are feeling.

Hang in there.

Life's what you make it.

[Bitter Almonds]

<p align="justify">No. I can definitely understand how one can become emotionally-invested in a pet. In a way, their form of bond/frienship is more open and honest. Sure, they don't have the full range of understanding and emotional complexities of humans, but they do possess the more basic forms of them - and in greater amounts than most people you'd encounter. Their loyalty, their honesty - there's no room for doubt. When you have it, you have it for life. They also have a great capacity for what we would constitute as "forgiveness." Our pets are part of the family/pack. It's just the way it is... and Clare couldn't have been more fortunate to have you as a friend as well.

My condolences on your loss.

[drsevrin]

As the companion to one dog, four cats, and two mice, you and Blir have my deepest sympathy. My dog Maggie is an 8 week old great pyrenees and my cats are three male orange tabby's and one male tortoiseshell. My oldest cat, Tommy, is 16 and once went missing in the snow-covered Wasatch mountains behind my house, which borders a wilderness area, for 2 1/2 months in winter. He turned up six miles away, deeper in the mountains at a highway snow-plow shed. I was devastated when he went missing and it was genuine miracle when he was found. My animals are as much a part of my family as my kids and as most of us, having lost animals before, understand how devastating it can be. My deepest sympathies to you both.

[bateman]

My condolences to all of you who have lost a beloved part of the family in such a bitter way. [:(] I guess it's part of life nevertheless sharing it with all of us here will surely help you to get over it much easier.

What gets me angry is when I hear stories of people poisoning or abusing our pets. Makes me want to do the same to them! What the hell do those idiots think who they are?? [:(!]

[Spaz]

Losing a pet is one of the most devastating things that can happen. I've gone through this a few times in my 44 years and it never gets any easier.

Both of our cats our healthy and we treat them as if they are our children. The ironic thing is that both of them were left behind when neighbors moved out of the apartment complex we were living in. They belonged to different owners and we took them in a few years apart, but it angers me to think that there are people who bring these cats into their home and then discard them like a piece of used furniture.

Rubellan, Blir and everyone who loves their pets obviously realize the true emotional attachment between man and 'beast'. These animals deserve every bit of the attention, love and affection we give them...and they give it back tenfold. They become part of us, part of the family. When that part is taken away, it can't be replaced.

But Rubellan and Blir (and everyone else who have lost their pets along the way), you must always remember that you gave them love, attention, friendship and so much more. They knew that. And that's why they gave it right back. So, unfortunately, you have to say goodbye to them and it's hard, but you soon will welcome the wonderful memories without feeling sadness.

And, in those memories, they live on.



SPAZ
www.princess-inc.com

[harleytexas]

I had to put my baby boy Buddy down on Jan 2 this year after his fighting cancer.

Buddy was a Maine Coon cat, they are the largest breed of cat and he went from 26 pounds down to 9 1/2 pounds.

I spent the night laying on the floor with him and giving him treats to eat. He could no longer get to his food/water dish so I brought the water to him that night. I held him and kissed him and talked to him all night long.

My wife and I were with him when they put him to sleep and it was one of the hardest things that I have ever been through.

Take care, keep remembering the good times.

Buddy is on the right with his brother Sydney

<a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v511/harleytexas/?action=view¤t=IM000616.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v511/harleytexas/IM000616.jpg" border="0" alt="Buddy"></a>

[brock]

Thanks for sharing your story and pictures. I dread the day my dog passes away. Here's a Time magazine essay by Charles Krauthammer about the loss of his family's dog. I think it's right on.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/krau ... 81,00.html

Of Dogs and Men
Wednesday, Jul. 16, 2003 By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Article
The way I see it, dogs had this big meeting, oh, maybe 20,000 years ago. A huge meeting — an international convention with delegates from everywhere. And that's when they decided that humans were the up-and-coming species and dogs were going to throw their lot in with them. The decision was obviously not unanimous. The wolves and dingoes walked out in protest.

Cats had an even more negative reaction. When they heard the news, they called their own meeting — in Paris, of course — to denounce canine subservience to the human hyperpower. (Their manifesto — La Condition Feline — can still be found in provincial bookstores.)

Cats, it must be said, have not done badly. Using guile and seduction, they managed to get humans to feed them, thus preserving their superciliousness without going hungry. A neat trick. Dogs, being guileless, signed and delivered. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I must admit that I've been slow to warm to dogs. I grew up in a non-pet-friendly home. Dogs do not figure prominently in Jewish-immigrant households. My father was not very high on pets. He wasn't hostile. He just saw them as superfluous, an encumbrance. When the Cossacks are chasing you around Europe, you need to travel light. (This, by the way, is why Europe produced far more Jewish violinists than pianists. Try packing a piano.)

My parents did allow a hint of zoological indulgence. I had a pet turtle. My brother had a parakeet. Both came to unfortunate ends. My turtle fell behind a radiator and was not discovered until too late. And the parakeet, God bless him, flew out a window once, never to be seen again. After such displays of stewardship, we dared not ask for a dog.

My introduction to the wonder of dogs came from my wife Robyn. She's Australian. And Australia, as lovingly recounted in Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country, has the craziest, wildest, deadliest, meanest animals on the planet. In a place where every spider and squid can take you down faster than a sucker-punched boxer, you cherish niceness in the animal kingdom. And they don't come nicer than dogs.

Robyn started us off slowly. She got us a border collie, Hugo, when our son was about 6. She knew that would appeal to me because the border collie is the smartest species on the planet. Hugo could 1) play outfield in our backyard baseball games, 2) do flawless front-door sentry duty, and 3) play psychic weatherman, announcing with a wail every coming thunderstorm.

When our son Daniel turned 10, he wanted a dog of his own. I was against it, using arguments borrowed from seminars on nuclear nonproliferation. It was hopeless. One giant "Please, Dad," and I caved completely. Robyn went out to Winchester, Va., found a litter of black Labs and brought home Chester.

Chester is what psychiatrists mean when they talk about unconditional love. Unbridled is more like it. Come into our house, and he was so happy to see you, he would knock you over. (Deliverymen learned to leave things at the front door.)

In some respects — Ph.D. potential, for example — I don't make any great claims for Chester. When I would arrive home, I fully expected to find Hugo reading the newspaper. Not Chester. Chester would try to make his way through a narrow sliding door, find himself stuck halfway and then look at me with total and quite genuine puzzlement. I don't think he ever got to understand that the rear part of him was actually attached to the front.

But it was Chester, who dispensed affection as unreflectively as he breathed, who got me thinking about this long-ago pact between humans and dogs. Cat lovers and the pet averse will just roll their eyes at such dogophilia. I can't help it. Chester was always at your foot or your hand, waiting to be petted and stroked, played with and talked to. His beautiful blocky head, his wonderful overgrown puppy's body, his baritone bark filled every corner of house and heart.

Then last month, at the tender age of 8, he died quite suddenly. The long, slobbering, slothful decline we had been looking forward to was not to be. When told the news, a young friend who was a regular victim of Chester's lunging love-bombs said mournfully, "He was the sweetest creature I ever saw. He's the only dog I ever saw kiss a cat."

Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering, it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all, it is perfectly normal, indeed, deeply human to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision — a creature — of the purest sweetness?

[DreamRedux]

I dread the day when my mom's German Shepherd mix (read: mutt) goes. By our estimation, he's over 11 years old now. He had the hip dysplasia, too, but I paid for corrective surgery.

Someone on another board lost his dog Bonnie and made these touching tribute videos.

The first one is set to Marc Cohn's One Safe Place. The second song is his own composition.


<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YsYrPsIfcmw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed>


<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kK5FGNYINS0&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed>

[plagiarism]

My condolences to all those who lost their ol' buddies recently. As far as I'm concerned, men win in the best friend competition. Women can keep their diamonds. They're just rocks. A dog will remain in your heart forever.

I don't have any dogs right now. I miss my Siberian husky, who was as sweet and goofy as a lab, but without the hyperness. (Most huskies are rather aloof.) One day I was out playing with him, and a squirrel just fell out of a tree. The squirrel managed to escape, but my husky kept looking up that tree for months, hoping another squirrel would drop from it. I also had a keeshond mix, who wanted to be alpha dog, but it was never to be as long as the husky was alive.

[KYYX4ever]

oh now, when you tell that anecdote about your Husky that just kept looking up that tree; LMAO! My black Lab, Porter, does this all the time. Once, like 3 years ago, while on a walk around the neighborhood, he spied a cat hiding underneath a car and naturally tried to eat it. EVERYTIME we walk past that driveway, from then on, he ALWAYS cops a peek under any car parked in that driveway. In fact, he's usually on the lookout for cats underneath ANY car we pass. It amazes me how the dog brain works, and how they remember that stuff.