My sister-in-law threw a little shindig to celebrate the end of summer at her house on Saturday.  I’m like those giddy office supply commercials where the men/women skip around singing, “It’s the most WONDERFUL time. . . of the year!” as their children cringe and shoot them dirty looks.  Yay for school starting next week!  I have to get through one more week of full-time Arden care, then Little Ms. ‘Tude will be back in preschool 5 glorious half-days a week.  Did I mention it’s the most wonderful time of the year?

It’s been 5 days since Delilah went to the great gazebo in the sky (shout out to Mike’s mom for coining the phrase!).  Today was one of the harder days.  I was mopey and hurting and missing Delilah somethin’ fierce, as they say in the south.  I suggested heading down to the Richmond SPCA just to “love on some dogs” and “check out the adoption process”.  I really didn’t think there was any way we’d end up coming home with a dog, as I was enjoying my hairless house and poopless lawn. 

The girls were so excited when they realized the lobby was full, literally full, of kittens.  Both of the girls love cats.  Unfortunately my allergies do not, so having a cat is not in our future.  I will also admit to not being that much of a cat person.  I’m definitely a huge dog person.  We let the girls oooh and ahhh and shriek over the cats while I shed tears over the puppy pen, full of beagle mixes that looked exactly like Delilah when she was a pup.  We looked at all the dogs and decided to visit with D’Angelo.  Like the crooner from this area with the same name, D’Angelo was a bit of an outlaw.  He had a nipping problem, was super-hyper, and couldn’t wait to knock the girls over.  He was very cute - black lab mix with white tipped feet and a stripe down the chest.  After about 30 minutes with that bad boy, we knew we didn’t want a dog with that much, ummmm, energy.  During our walk through the SPCA, we saw a yellow lab mix coming out of a visiting room.  She was incredibly docile when we saw her the first time, so we asked to meet her.

Enter Thora.  She’s about 2, a little chunky at 64 pounds, and entirely sweet.  She doesn’t really jump, knows her name, seems to be housebroken, and is very laid back.  We all fell in love with her, especially Arden and Lily when they realized they could hug her as hard as they could and she tolerated it like a champ. 

We wanted to think about it and see how we felt, but there was a family across from us eying Thora after watching how calm she was with our children.  They wanted to check her out.  The adoption counselor explained that dogs like Thora don’t last long - they aren’t too big, mellow, easily trainable, and good-natured.  We discussed amongst ourselves and decided to take the big girl home.  Lily explained that her heart was broken over Delilah, and Arden said that she wouldn’t love Thora as much.  On the way home, we talked about how our hearts stretch to include new people and new dogs.  I think all of our hearts stretched some today. 

It’s been a great experience so far - she seems to love the backyard, but sticks close to us.  We had to hold her back from swimming in the pond, but once we got her some water she seemed less interested.  She hung out with Mike while he made burgers, was kind and gentle with kids and dogs alike at PetSmart (had to buy a crate), and is now passed out next to me having lots of dog dreams. She’s exhausted after her big day.  I’ll be signing her up for obedience classes and asking some friends I know with dogs if they’ll let us hang out so we can be sure she’s socialized and truly gentle with other dogs, but in the meantime, the house feels a whole lot less empty.

Thora, right before she fell asleep:

Mostly asleep:

And sleeping while her head is still up:

Bear with me.  It’s the last post. 

I’m doing better today.  Yesterday was, well, total crap.  I didn’t expect it to be different.  However, I didn’t expect that watching Mike be so upset would be the difficult part. 

I absolutely loved how the vet handled it.  They have a private room with a big comfy chair and a rug.  We spent about 20 minutes in there just loving on Delilah and trying to calm her down (she pooped on Mike during the 1 mile car ride to the vet’s office).  One of the techs brought in a sheepskin mat and two big towels to make a bed on the floor.  The vet talked to us - she wanted to know what was going on with Delilah.  After explaining about her falling, her arthritis, her mouth tremors, her incontinence, and her general dislike of anything other than sleep, she agreed it was time.  After explaining that they would take Delilah out of the room for a moment while they put in a catheter for her vein, she asked us if we wanted to be there.  We did. 

Once Delilah was back with her bandaged front leg, the vet came back with a sedative.  If it hadn’t been so sad, I would have laughed - within seconds of the sedative going in, Delilah made this weird and happy ‘MMMMmmmmmmm’ sound as she keeled over.  We stretched her out into a comfortable position. The vet said we could stay as long as we wanted and to let her know when we wanted her to inject the medication that would stop her heart.  We got plenty of time to kiss her and pet her.  Once we alerted the vet that we were ready, she came in with two syringes.  Delilah was still sort of awake, but completely relaxed and breathing softly.  Once the first medication was in, it was literally seconds before she passed away.  The vet had warned us that there might be twitching or her chest might expand after she died, but none of that happened.  She just looked like she always does, asleep on the living room floor or passed out in our bedroom. 

I’m really glad I decided to stay because watching her go gave me a lot of peace.  I never doubted we were making the right decision, but there is something very unnatural about “killing” your pet.  After watching it, I wished that people could be so lucky as to choose when they go, stretched out on a big comfy bed, and totally high on sedation before taking the big sleep while people you love hold and talk softly to you.  It’s really quite a contrast after watching Mike’s mom take her last breath after months of suffering from cancer - and ironic how in death we can be more humane to our animals than we can with each other. 

The hardest part has been looking at certain things, like Delilah’s bed.  I had to get rid of it this morning because literally every time I came into the room and saw it empty, I’d start bawling.  I took some of her joint pills over to a neighbor with a 13 year old lab, and dropped off some of the better dog treats and rawhides to another neighbor with a three year old lab.  She’s the one who unfortunately got to see me cry because she was asking me questions about Delilah and I have trouble talking about it right now.  She’s a dog lover so I think she understood. 

Lily and Arden are doing okay.  Lily cried last night, after she went to bed. I’m pretty sure 50% of the tears were a stall tactic to get us back in her bedroom, but 50% were genuine. She said the house felt weird without Delilah and she didn’t like it.  Both of them took pictures of Delilah into their schools today - Arden’s teacher said she carried it around next to her heart between activities.  Those little actions mean so much to me - and even though we often yelled at Delilah to quit breathing in our faces, we all loved her very much. 

By the way, these pictures were taken right before we took her to the vet.  She actually ran across our front lawn for about 10 seconds before deciding she’d rather be inside.  It was great to see her run one last time. 

We had Mike’s sister’s kids over on Saturday night for Cheeburger Cheeburger, bowling, and a slumber party.  It was a cousin-fest!  The high point was watching Matt attempt to eat the “Pounder” at Cheeburger.  He didn’t, but that was good, because puking would have been in his immediate future if he had. 

And I finally downloaded the pictures:

I am SO far behind in blogging.  Between not having my car and a lot of things happening last week, I never got around to downloading pictures from Lily’s swim meet and our trip to Yorktown to celebrate Mia’s 2nd birthday.  Here they are!  Make sure you click on “show info’ during the slideshow to read the captions.  Or don’t, and just make up your own captions. . .