What do you do when you lose a friend?

This past week was a hard one. We had to have one of our dogs put down, a lovely, smiley, gentle soul named Rock (although she was a girl).  She came to us as a puppy, an adorable little German Shepherd mix, and she quickly became the boon companion of our older dog, Sampson.  Sampson became a puppy again with her around and I think those were the best years of his life.  About four years after Rock arrived on the scene, we acquired another dog, Angel, a Jack Russell – rat terrier mix who has bounced through life for the last eleven years. After Sampson died, Angel was Rock’s companion, often sitting with her rear end on her prostrate friend.   They went everywhere together, whether it was to determine who was encroaching on our yard or on wild romps through the woods on their occasional escapes from our pool enclosure.  Rock had not been eating for a while and was losing weight, and even though we suspected the diagnosis would not be good, it was heart-rending to learn she had cancer, a type from which she could not recover and which could cause her to stroke out at any time.

We buried her in our back yard, where Sampson and the cats with which we have been blessed share her resting place.  She was so much in our lives that we still think we see her here and there, and it has been hard to watch Angel looking for her everywhere.

Here’s to all dogs and the people who say they are their owners,  but who are really family.  My one regret is that dogs have shorter lifetimes than we do, so when we have a dog, it is with the realization that sooner or later we will be losing a part of our hearts.