Two years ago, right after Christmas, we lost our family dog, Cole. He had been with us from the time he was a few months old until he died after twelve and a half years of being a loyal and true friend. Even after so much time had passed, when i came home from work, I expected to be greeted by him at the door. My daughters have been after me to get another dog but I didn’t feel we would be able to take care of a dog with our hectic schedules. This summer we began talking about it again and I finally agreed we could get another dog as long as everyone committed to taking good care of it. We decided to get another puppy and went online to find a dog in need of adoption. We found a shepherd-chou pup that had been rescued in Kentucky. Lucy joined our family a week and a half ago and has made herself at home. As I watched her running in the snow today, it reminded me of Cole and how he loved to run and play.

— Xavier from Gaithersburg, MD

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In Memory of Griffen from the Canada Free Press

Riehl World View: In Memory of Mark Levin’s Dear Griffen

In 1994 we adopted a 2 year old Golden Retriever named Luke from a local rescue club. He quickly became our best friend and an inseparable part of our family over the next 8 years. Just a few days after he turned 10 years old, we lost him when he was hit by a car in front of our house. December 5, 2002 still reigns as the worst night of my life. I can’t even talk about it because I blame myself for what happened, and will probably never be able to forgive myself. What we didn’t know then, was that it was just the beginning of a series of events that would forever change our lives. We were so devastated by losing Luke that we didn’t want to think about getting another Golden for awhile, but just a few weeks later we heard through a friend that the local Humane Society had a Golden Retriever that she thought we might be interested in.
I couldn’t resist, so I went down there to see the dog, and that’s when Marley came bounding into our lives. She was a very exuberant 1 ½ year old girl who seemed very sweet, and I fell in love immediately. On New Year’s Eve we were about to begin the new year with a new dog! We found out that Marley had belonged to a family who paid her little attention, and this was the fourth time she had been found running loose and was picked up by the Humane Society. This time, when the folks at the Humane Society called her owners, they said “keep her, we don’t want her back”. They have no idea what they gave up.
Marley thrived in our home; she finally was getting all the love and attention that she had been craving for so long. We adored Marley, and she and Dolly became best buddies. We called her “Marleybone”.
Summer came, and somewhere in the middle of July I had taken Marley outside one morning, and when we were heading back into the house she suddenly acted like she was in pain. When she didn’t get better, I took her in to the vet. He gave us some meds for her, which seemed to help at first, but a few days later she was unable to move her hind legs. Our vet referred us to a specialist, and she responded really well to the steroids he gave her. He assured us that all we needed to do was wean her off the steroids over a couple of weeks and she should make a full recovery. Our relief and joy was short-lived though, because within 24 hours she once again was unable to walk without dragging her useless hind legs behind her. We took her back for further testing, and the results were devastating. She had a tumor on her spinal cord, presumable malignant. She was only 2 years old, so it was nearly impossible to wrap my mind around this. The only way to know for sure and to decide what combination of chemo drugs she needed would be to biopsy the tumor, but the only way to do a biopsy was through surgery. He didn’t want to do surgery because the high risk of permanent paralysis outweighed the benefits. IF he could successfully do it, the best we could hope for was to buy her maybe a year of living with the side effects of chemo. No matter what we did, at the end of the day we would still lose this wonderful creature.
Very few things are as heartbreaking as walking out of the vet’s office with an empty collar, but when it was clear that she could no longer live the life of a dog and nothing more medically could be done, the one last kind and loving thing we could do for her was to let her go.
What I learned from that whole experience is that God’s plans don’t always make sense at first. We were so completely devastated to have lost two very beloved dogs in just 8 months. Why us? I later came to realize that what happened with Marley had never been about us. All the grieving we did for what we lost wasn’t about us. This was all part of God’s plan. He created the path to lead us to Marley so she could know the love of a devoted family in the little time that she had left. Luke had lived a full 10 year life, and was probably spared the all kinds of pain and everything else that goes along with being a geriatric dog. It was about Marley needing us. We were God’s servants, and our purpose was to make the rest of Marley’s life as full and happy as it could be. From this I learned to deal with loss and I learned that things happen for a reason, and eventually everything will be okay and life will go on. For all the pain and grief of those last few weeks with Marley, there is not one single minute of the time we had her that I would trade for anything in the world because the joy and unconditional love she gave us will always be with us.
A week after Marley died we saw an ad in the paper and after a quick phone call we hurried off to a farm in western Iowa to bring home our new Golden Retriever puppy. We had decided not to get another dog for awhile, but the very next day we wondered how long we would be able to stand not having a Golden in our lives. We realized that we had done most of our grieving while Marley was still alive, so it made sense that we were ready so soon. “Katie” is 8 years old now, and if we hadn’t lost Luke and then lost Marley, we wouldn’t have this beautiful, loving friend that we have now.

— Kathy from Fremont, NE

On December 7, 2010, at about 2:00 PM, Paine, my canine companion, was gently put to sleep by his vet. He was, as usual, at his sentry post at a corner of the deck, overlooking the yard. The last touch he felt was me cradling his head and the last sounds he heard were me telling him that he was a “Good Boy”. At the end, he was, as all living creatures are, defeated by time. In his last exam before letting Painey Boy depart, Doc advised he had severe hip dysplasia and probably a cancer of his prostate, bladder or urinary tract. Paine was 15 1/2 years old and had been adopted from Friends of Homeless Animals about ten years ago.

I could tell many stories of my Adventures with Paine, but suffice it to say he and I went through hell and high water together. He has been my ever-faithful companion for a decade, a fierce protector, a ferocious combatant in battles with ‘coons, skunks and ground hogs and, yes, occasionally my confidante. His greatest achievements were that he survived a hell of being locked in a cage for five or more years by his previous owner and that he became the most accomplished pup I’ve ever had or been around. Hell, he went to France with me, wowed the Frenchies and is the only pup I ever knew to swim in the English Channel. He was, by far, the most intelligent canine companion I’ve had come live with me and almost eerily perceptive about anything I needed him to do. We eventually came to a point where a look, gesture, body position or slight sound from either would put us on the same page, same sentence, same word. He was a magnificent companion.

My Boy taught me one helluva lot about good old dawgs and for that and for Paine just being Paine, I have no words.

After his heart stopped, Doc helped me wrap him in an American flag shroud for which to be cremated in. I don’t really give a damn if anyone feels this is disrespect for the Flag. He was an All-American Canine and named for Thomas Paine. A neighbor with a pickup truck transported us to the SPCA. I rode in the bed of the truck with my Boy on our last ride together.

It will be most strange to not awaken 45 minutes before a sliver of dawn breaches blackness to get ready for our just-barely-daylight first walk of the day.

— Joe from Charlottesville, VA

My wife Susan has always wanted to have a dog. She wanted a small lap dog that would be easy for her to travel with alone while I was away working. A companion for her that she could easily handle. She thought that this would have to be a small dog since she has physical challenges.

We tried to adopt a male terrier from an adoption fair sponsored by the Detroit Zoo in the summer of 2008 but that did not work out for us. Sadly we had to return Dash back to the No-Kill shelter in Hillsdale County that had brought him there. The shelter actually had no room for him so the director met us there and fostered him at her home. she was a very nice lady. We had spent lots of money on food, and toys and we gave it all to her for Dash.

This past summer however, was a different story. My wife became unable to work and we filed for Social Security Disability for her online in July. A week later I was let go from my job as a truck driver from Ryder Integrated Logistics.

With no income coming in and a six week backlog in unemployment benefit determinations, things were getting pretty tight. That is when it happened.

When we were pulling in the driveway from grocery shopping with our emergency food assistance card. My wife spotted a brindle colored puppy in the neighbor’s front yard. She was drawn to it. She had to go and talk to the neighbor to see if it was okay to play with the dog.

To her amazement, they asked her if she wanted the dog! My wife asked why they did not want the dog anymore since they had it for a few days already. They explained that the dog that they already had before this one was given to them was all that they could handle and they were just going to let this one wander the streets. They were actually trying to shoo it away when she came over to talk with them about the dog. Susan was not having any of that. She was not about to stand by and watch as another loving dog was turned out to fend for itself on the streets. So she said “of course I will take the dog”.

Those renters moved out that very day and sadly took their original dog, a beautiful female pit bull with them. But my wife took the brindle puppy into our fenced in yard and played with her as I brought the groceries in from the car and put them away.

I came outside when I was done putting the food away and my beautiful wife was sitting on a lawn chair stroking the dog’s head. su looked up at me and asked if we could keep her. I hesitated for a moment thinking of having another mouth to feed on an already uncertain future. I told her that thought, and said that although the dog was indeed a very nice dog, we just could not afford to take one on now.

She pleaded with me, batting those beautiful brown eyes at me coyly. The dog came over to me and stood there looking sadly at me. I eyed her over as she stood there. She was about 30 pounds and was balding in spots. I surmised that she had mange. i pointed that condition out to Su. She continued to plead for keeping the dog. I reached down to pat the dog’s head and she looked up at me and her eyes lit up and she licked my hand as if it were a giant lollipop

I was smitten with her then and there, but the pragmatist in me was still reserved. I told Su that we could keep her only long enough to locate a no kill shelter that would take her. The rest of that afternoon I was online locating no kill shelters. I contacted every one of them in Michigan and even a few of them in northern Ohio and northern Indiana. None of them were taking any more dogs or cats. They were all full due to the horrid economy in this region.

And so I was actually kind of relieved that we were stuck with this particular dog. Su named her Lyndi Lou. And we went back online to the Friends of Animals website and purchased a spay coupon from them and set about to find a local animal hospital that participates in their program. We found a great on in Berkley Michigan about 15 miles from our house.

We took Lyndi there right away and the vet was great. He saw how distressed Lyndi was with the mange and did a skin scraping. He said that she had a bad case of generalized demodectic mange and he recommended a series of medicated baths and dips and a course of antibiotics.

Over the course of the next month we took her once a week to the Berkley Animal Clinic in the morning at nine and dropped her off. She would be done with her treatment by about three in the afternoon. She has had two negative skin scrapings in a row as of two weeks ago. So they scheduled her for the spay on the seventeenth of December, 2010.

So in conclusion, although this year has had some significant challenges for my wife and I, we are ending this year on a high note having given ourselves a wonderful gift, and Lyndi a new lease on life.

Lyndi is just an absolute joy. She has never once been anything but happy with us and our two aging cats even when she had such severe itching because of mange.

Lyndi is a terrier mix. The vet determined that she was only about 7 months old. We think that she has a little bit of American Stafford (Pit) and a little bit of Greyhound in her. She loves to run around in our fenced in back yard. And she is very fast. Her coloring is as beautiful as her disposition is. She is now very healthy and happy to own my wife and I. We wouldn’t have it any other way!

— David from Pontiac, MI

Our misbehaving, darling, sweet Maggie – a pure bred poodle who, if she ended up weighing more than 7 lbs., her breeder said we could take her back for a full refund – HA! – she soon weighed 11 lbs. and was the sweetest, spunkiest lil pup in the world. She was so averse to water, she would tip-toe, barely touching her feet to the ground if it was the slightest bit wet, even when running to get a treat or a love. Speaking of love, Holly Magnolia (Maggie’s full name)was such a love – as a toy poodle, she was easily excitable and loved to run around, but if you could get her to roll on her back, and patiently, gently, rub and tickle her belly, she would melt into your arms.
However, if you had food in your hand, she’d snatch it out and snarl and bare her teeth like a pit-bull.
the thing is, my darling Maggie, loved with all of her heart, and would wait every night for me to massage her every night before bed, I am allergic to dogs, less so with poodles, but still get asthma and rashes if i pet them…I suffered from my allergies constantly by being with Maggie, but I wouldn’t trade a moment I spent with my lovable, darling, “puppy” who was the first furry creature i could hold in my arms (my allergies are severe and I get asthma and/or very sick if I am around dogs and cats…My precious Maggie was the only dog I have ever been able to love and hold and she gave me such pure love…when I got pregnant, I couldn’t hold her without getting very sick with asthma, but Maggie understood, she took what love she could get it, and always looked me in the eyes with her true- look of love. When my baby was born, she would bark incessantly if the baby cried and look up at me with such consternation, “why can’t you stop this, Mama?!
I will love and cherish my special moments with my sweet Maggie and will find a way for my daughter(who is also, extremely allergic) to have the amazing, special relationship unique to man and dog.

— Lisa from Santa Ana, CA