blackhaus7
Vlad the Impaler
- Joined
- May 20, 2004
- Posts
- 5,409
Fifteen years, four months and five days wasn't enough. We put our Black Lab down today. Admittedly, fifteen years is remarkable considering she was large and from a sporting breed.
She had impaired vision and hearing and got around a lot slower than in her youth. But if she couldn't see or hear who you were, she could still smell who you were. And hadn't lost her intelligence or personality. So it was hard.
She was the only dog that had put me on the ground. We were out after a snow storm. The temperature had risen that day and started to melt the snow, then dropped quickly turning parking lots into ice rinks. I was walking on one of those ice rinks with Lucky roaming about, her black easy to keep track of in all the white. I had turned around and was headed back when I heard her claws clicking on the ice as she ran. She would normally brush by me as she ran, but not today. She hit me like a linebacker and, as I watched her retreat through my feet, I knew hitting the ground was going to hurt. She returned just long enough to realize how pissed off I was and wisely kept her distance the rest of the walk to let me cool off.
Exercising Lucky was easy. Just grab the tennis racket and three tennis balls. Why three? Because she could get two in her mouth and the game would no longer be "Fetch", but "Keep Away." And if I hit a ball straight up, she would jump to full extension and catch it in mid-air.
She was the granddaughter of the first Black Lab we owned. My brother and I got Sarge as a pup in 1974. And she is the last of the line that I know of.
The vet hated to do it. His office is just behind our house and he was used to seeing me walk Lucky past in the alley (on our way to the back door of the pizza place to see if there were any scraps of crust around the dumpster. Pizza was her favorite food. She would sit in front of us and wait for the crust to be tossed to her whenever we had pizza.) We stayed with her the whole time. My wife and son broke down and then we carried her carefully home to bury her in the back yard by the trees. My mom came by about an hour later. She said she just didn't have the heart to be here but had said her goodbyes this morning and cried. My mom NEVER cries. When I told one of my closest friends in Tulsa (a no-holds-barred cutthroat), he teared up, "She was such a good woofer." That she was.
I'm really not starting a thread nearly as much as paying tribute to a very dear friend.
Godspeed, Lucky.
She had impaired vision and hearing and got around a lot slower than in her youth. But if she couldn't see or hear who you were, she could still smell who you were. And hadn't lost her intelligence or personality. So it was hard.
She was the only dog that had put me on the ground. We were out after a snow storm. The temperature had risen that day and started to melt the snow, then dropped quickly turning parking lots into ice rinks. I was walking on one of those ice rinks with Lucky roaming about, her black easy to keep track of in all the white. I had turned around and was headed back when I heard her claws clicking on the ice as she ran. She would normally brush by me as she ran, but not today. She hit me like a linebacker and, as I watched her retreat through my feet, I knew hitting the ground was going to hurt. She returned just long enough to realize how pissed off I was and wisely kept her distance the rest of the walk to let me cool off.
Exercising Lucky was easy. Just grab the tennis racket and three tennis balls. Why three? Because she could get two in her mouth and the game would no longer be "Fetch", but "Keep Away." And if I hit a ball straight up, she would jump to full extension and catch it in mid-air.
She was the granddaughter of the first Black Lab we owned. My brother and I got Sarge as a pup in 1974. And she is the last of the line that I know of.
The vet hated to do it. His office is just behind our house and he was used to seeing me walk Lucky past in the alley (on our way to the back door of the pizza place to see if there were any scraps of crust around the dumpster. Pizza was her favorite food. She would sit in front of us and wait for the crust to be tossed to her whenever we had pizza.) We stayed with her the whole time. My wife and son broke down and then we carried her carefully home to bury her in the back yard by the trees. My mom came by about an hour later. She said she just didn't have the heart to be here but had said her goodbyes this morning and cried. My mom NEVER cries. When I told one of my closest friends in Tulsa (a no-holds-barred cutthroat), he teared up, "She was such a good woofer." That she was.
I'm really not starting a thread nearly as much as paying tribute to a very dear friend.
Godspeed, Lucky.
