My girl, Mars 1999 - 2011

How do you imagine life without this waiting for you at home?


I don't know, either...


When I met this girl, she was five days old...I meant to call her Duckweed because she was going to be such a swimmer. But she let me know that she was a wader, not a swimmer.

Maybe my brother had something to do with that, throwing her off the dock into water over her head when she was only little. I've always kiddingly encouraged her to bite him when he visits, to get him back for that day, but she was never like that with people.


A couple weeks ago, she was having a really hard time with her stomach. I couldn't quite figure out if she was blocked with something or it was gas pains, or what. At the vet's office it was discovered after blood and urine tests - and then xrays where she had to wear a muzzle, which I was truly sad to see - she has NEVER had to wear a muzzle... Well, she's got a mass growing between her stomach and her liver. Apparently, it's making it difficult for food to pass from the stomach to the intestines. No wonder she's not been comfortable or happy.


The decision is then what to do about it. This is what is so difficult.

At her age, healing will be long and drawn out. Large breed dogs live between 10 - 15 years, generally. Surgery done on intestines and stomachs are not statistically favoring survival...not to mention that they cost quite a bit.


As she lays quietly in her narcotic slumber on my living room floor, I see an artificial peacefulness...a calm before the storm.

But what I do not want my dog to have to face is that storm.

No needle biopsies, no cones, no pain or cages smelling of chemical sterilizing.


Certainly I want her here. Always. Forever.

But these are selfish thoughts that do not put me in the place of her four little paws that always smell of her skin, running and the garden.


God, this grieving is going to take a while. What a fantastic friend she's been.

But what a fantastic friend I must be to be able to let her go in peace.

I would and will want this for myself when it's my time and I will give it to her in hers...though there will be many, many tears.





She's gone with me everywhere...and played with the large and the small.



Marge, Marzipan, Marscapone... squirrel hunter.





Good bye, my girl.