Saturday, September 8, 2012

Closing Chapter

So much has happened since the last entry that Maggy made. Our happy, loving, fun little girl kept us on our toes. First it was mommy helping her to write these entries, then sometimes me (daddy) helped too. But her story needs to be told to the end, so here goes. When we brought her home, worried that we had done the right thing, Maggy quickly melted our hearts and made them hers. There is something special about rescuing a dog, and Maggy had it in spades. I need to write as Maggy for a bit, so please bear with me as I channel her and try to write through the tears.

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About a year after my last post a new boy came to live with us. His name is Roscoe and he seemed very confused and lonely and scared. I tried to play with him some, but he's bigger than me and I'm older than him, so it didn't happen much. At first he cried a lot, and I tried to tell him that it would be ok, that mommy and daddy would be good for him, but he just wanted to go home. He didn't  understand why he was living here. I don't know that he ever will, but for a boy he isn't all that bad. We'll just ignore the whole male-dominance thing, because it never worked with me. I'm the princess and I will not tolerate any competition!

    Roscoe and Me.

Well... age begins to creep up on us all, and the gray you see in the picture just kind of proves it. The last two winters it was all I could do to stay warm. Daddy keeps the house so darn cold that I spent most of my time on or under a blanket. Mommy loves to snuggle, and I discovered that she would let me get under the covers with her in the mornings after daddy got out of bed. Oh my... talk about warm! Those mornings were special and I would get some really good sleep. I think daddy even took a picture once... oh... here it is...

    Mommy and me sleeping in.

I've had a pretty good life. Roscoe keeps me from being completely lonely when mommy and daddy go away on trips, or even sometimes when they both leave during the day. The food is good, especially the things that mommy calls puppycakes and the ones that daddy calls puffles. I will do absolutely Anything for those! I try to tell them that, but they never really seem to understand. That's the sad part.

When it started getting cold again last year, I started to not feel quite right. It's always great to eat, but sometimes eating didn't make me feel so good, so I started slowing down. Yes, I know... me... not gulping food? Well, it happened. I tried to tell mommy and daddy that I wasn't feeling quite right, but like I said, they didn't understand what I was saying. It got harder and harder for me to keep warm, and walks were pretty much out of the question. After a while it got to the point that I didn't want to eat any more. That is when mommy and daddy finally took notice. Goodness but what they didn't try to feed me so that I would just eat something!

They took me to see a nice man that put a cold thing on my tummy and listened to it gurgle (talk about embarrassing) and then he and mommy and daddy stayed in that room while a nice lady took me to another room and poked me with a sharp thing. I am a firm believer that you should never see your own blood, and that's what she made me do. I just knew that this was not a good thing.

Well, a few days later I was back there and this time I wasn't fighting it so much. I stayed in the back room there for a couple of nights and finally started feeling better. They had some thing stuck into my arm and I was very good and left it alone because they said that it was going to help me feel better. They were right... mostly. After I went home mommy tried to poke a thing into me every day and I finally got tired of it and started complaining. Things just weren't the same for me anymore. I felt rotten.

One night they had a big bunch of people come over. Some of them I knew and was happy to see, but others were new and nice to me. I should have been a beagle on a mission to eat everything I could get my mouth on, but I just wasn't up to it. Being locked in the bedroom with Roscoe didn't help matters.

The next morning mommy and daddy left with those big things full of clothes. I didn't think it was a good time for that to happen, but they went anyway. Nana showed up later that day and she stayed with us for days and days and days. Don't get me wrong, I love Nana lots, and she took very good care of me, but I wanted and needed mommy and daddy to be home. When they finally did come home I did my best to be happy and chipper and all that, but I just felt like poo and pretty soon they knew it. The next few days were hard. Mommy tried and tried to poke me with that thing, kept telling me that it would make me feel better, but a girl can only take being poked so many times. Then everything changed.

One night as mommy was getting ready for bed, she turned to me and said something. I wasn't quite paying attention because something inside didn't feel right at all. I looked up at her and gave her my "what was that you said?" look when it hit me. The next few minutes are pretty blurry, but the next clear thing I remember is sitting up and feeling lots better. I got up and ran for the food bowl, thinking that they would follow me and maybe give me something to eat, but they were still sitting in the hall, and they were crying....

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Ok, I have to stop her for a minute or two. Maggy leaving us was sudden and hard. We sat there with her body as it settled, wondering where she had run off to. Nana came over and said her goodbyes. It was a hard night in the middle of a hard week. I had been laid off on Monday, and she left us on Thursday night, May 24th, 2012. Maggy has a few more things she wants to say...

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As I sat there trying to figure out what was going on, I heard a familiar voice. When I turned around, there was the nice lady that I lived with when I was just a puppy! I hadn't seen her in so very long! We spent some happy time together and then I realized that she could understand me. No dog likes to think about not being understood (let alone loved) yet it's something we deal with every day. Anyway, she told me that we were in Heaven now and would be together for as long as we wanted. I asked about mommy and daddy and where they were, and she said that they weren't here yet and that I would have to wait for them. I tried waiting, but I've never been the patient type. I've come back around a couple of times, snuggling with them and trying to keep the memories of that time alive for all of us.

Lately I have been thinking about this blog and how I just got distracted and left it unfinished. I tried to get mommy to finish it for me, but that wasn't working so I went and found daddy. He has been sitting in some strange place all day and then coming home... it looks like he is doing the same thing to me and I don't understand why he doesn't just do that at home like he used to. After a couple of days of laying at his feet like I used to do, I decided that today I had to tell him to finish this blog for me.

It hasn't been easy for him (or mommy) and they have both been crying a lot as he's been writing what I have been telling him. I'm trying not to cry, but it seems to be what everybody is doing. I'll keep coming around and keeping them company as long as the rules will let me, but after that I'll just have to wait in my bed by the door to this place. They'll be here someday, and I will be waiting for them.

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Ok, Maggy... I've let you have your say. If she has more to say I'll be back, but I think this will be the closing entry in her blog. Yeah... so there's the question: so what do you do with your departed dog's blog? We're going to keep it for now, and maybe archive it sometime in the future. Maggy will always be a part of us, and we miss her every day.