You are all killing me here, damn it.

omg.

O.K. Now that everyone has cleared out of here, I can privately re-live the the day that every ounce of kindness, love, and warmth permanently left my soul.

Because I have no feeling left in my cold, cold heart and that's the way I prefer to keep it, I don't want to get all gushy. No details about what this dog meant to me.

I was about 8 years old playing outside and I saw my dog (name purposely omitted)hanging over the fence on his leash that was too short, kicking for his life. He climbed on top of his dog house and over the fence. When I went to go tell my mom, my dad, my brothers...SOMEBODY that Duffy...er...I mean "the dog" was going to die if someone didn't go save him, I could find no one. I was too short to reach him even with going around to the other side of the fence and climbing on top of the dog house.

I sat there and watched him till he quit kicking.

Every single one of them that I've lost has left a tear in my heart until it's now little more than a patchwork of stitches and slapdash mending jobs. It's a wonder it doesn't just fall to pieces when I think of them or when I read something like this.

Except, of course, that it does.

True Story: When I was 17, my mother decided to get a golden retriever. It was named "Gold" by my little brother. It wasn't my dog, really, but she started hanging out with me and we became best friends. We lived in an old farmhouse with 200 acres of land that Gold could play on. We didn't have to chain her up or leash her, and she always stayed on our side of the street. The other side of the street was cookie-cutter, residential houses. I have to say that I loved that dog, maybe as much as I have loved anyone or anything, humans included. The following Christmas Eve day, Gold wasn't feeling well. I hoped that it would pass, but she got worse, more lethargic. Then she began to get sick. On Christmas day at about 6:00 AM, we called a country vet that my aunt knew who would see Gold. My mother didn't drive and my aunt lived a mile away, so I asked her to pick me up as I was needed to hold onto Gold as she was beginning to suffer from convulsions. I sat in the back seat with her head in my lap as we drove 20 miles to the vet in -20 weather. I rubbed her body as she went rigid and tight with each convulsion. I spoke to her in a soothing voice telling her, as if she could understand, that everything would be alright, even as tears were streaming down my face, and I was doubting the veracity of my own words. I carried her into the vet. He knew, almost immediately, that someone had poisoned her, perhaps by throwing some poisoned meaty bone into our yard. I stayed by her side as the vet pumped her stomach and tried to save her life. She lapsed into a coma, at which point the doctor said there was nothing more he could do. I went home and waited for her to wake up. That Christmas evening he called saying that she wouldn't be coming home.
Merry Christmas. God bless us, everyone.

Waaaah!!!

Christ on a crutch Jodi! I was already in a holiday funk and now I'm crying like the only girl who didn't get a date to the prom. There should be orange traffic cones around this post.

WOW, Ds.

GOD. As if I don't cry enough.

But I must say, that was so beautifully rendered that it probably made even the most stoic souls shed a tear. If not, YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. REAL pets are family.

A little about Lark. She was my parents' dog. I had to euthanize her while they were out of town.

I will cuddle my Kitten Children extra tonight.

M missed Q so much, all he could do was sit in the tub, and let the water drip on his head, and never ate again. I'm glad they were in my life, and your dogs in yours.

1n 1992, Max, my beloved Newfie and a stand-in for his brother Dreyfus on Empty Nest, suddenly died from bloat - basically it's a dog disease where your stomach twists into a knot and the digesting gases in the stomach are trapped, causing the stomach to bloat, killing the dog. Well, I freaked out and cried like a little girl. I'd had Max through college, through three moves, through numerous relationships and into my marriage. But the problem was, what does one do with a 220-pound dead dog, I mean, you can't bury him in the backyard without arising the suspicions of the neighbors or the police. I think it's against health regulations, too. So I called my vet and he told me they have a place behind the clinic where you can leave the bodies afterhours. So I covered my beloved dog in a white sheet, andtogether my wife and I carried his stiff corpse out to my Jeep, where to our dismay we found he would not fit in the backseat. After some clever wedging, we got the poor hound secured and drove off to the clinic, tears still welling in my eyes. When we got there, we went to the rear of the bulding, where there was a horizontal chest-like freezer, not unlike the kind you might find at Sears, walMart or Sam's Club. When I opened it, inside there were several smallish bundles, neatly wrapped in towels or sheets or blankies. I went and got my goliath package and brought him over to the chest. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that no amount of clever sliding or turning or wedging was going to make this colussus fit into that whatever cubic-foot hole it was. So, I put my dog, and all my memories, into the cooler, stiff body and all. And I continued to cry as I drove away and saw him in the rearview mirror, his four, dead, straight legs sticking straight up out of the cooler and holding the lid wide open to the sky so all of their cold dead little souls could get out.

And that's the closest you'll ever get to an emotionally revealing tale (or tail) from me.

And here I am, in the dog-eating capitol of the world, about to wolf (pun intended) down a curried poodle kebab, and you go and do this?

"No thanks ma'am. I'll just be finishing the two I have and nothing more. What's that? Do I need a doggy bag? A silver one please. I like the way it shimmers."

sass just HAD to send me the link to this your latest blog only to push me back down into the funk that Bongo left me. have you ever seen a bald biker cry? it's not pretty.

way to make me cry. on a day that i spent its entirety crying.

i held my dead cat until her stiff body had to be pried out of my arms so that she could be put deep enough in the ground so that the raccoons wouldn't get her.

"Doggone."

That's what I told my mother when she informed me of the death of her beloved canine, Jodi.

Doggone!

I want to know more about you.

Awww, thanks, kiddles! Happily (?) to say, though, this was 21-1/2 years (HALF MY LIFETIME! ago. shudder. But still it kills me. Alas.

That broke my heart, Jodi, so I can only imagine what it did to you.

There's no more denim bean bag chair, there's no 8-track player and there's nowhere to hide when you grow up. All you can do is stay strong and know that you need to stay that way when those who need it the most depend on you.

Sending you as much non snarky, innuendo free support I can muster, Jodi.