Changing Places

We had to say goodbye last night to our 13 year old golden retriever, Chance. We first met Chance when he was a year and a half old. We adopted him from a family going through divorce, and the young boy who had to give him up to move into an apartment that didn’t allow dogs was heartbroken. We let him visit with Chance for a few months to ease the transition for both of them.

Chance adjusted well and enjoyed his new home with us, even our cat Sammy,and we eventually added other pets to the family.  We lost Sammy and added new cats Willis and Selena. We adopted a new old dog, Roxie, whose family was moving to Texas. She was thirty pounds overweight and as we took weight off her, would get so hungry she would steal bread off the counter. We added a cute puppy, Darwin, who turned into a wonderful therapy dog. We lost Selena, probably to a coyote, her body was never found. We lost Roxie to cancer, and she died in my arms. We added another cute puppy, Edison, at the suggestion of the breeder we got Darwin from, to keep Darwin company when Chance was gone.

And so last night, be lost Chance, who had ruptured discs in his neck, couldn’t walk, and was in a lot of pain. When the pain became too much for him and for us, we let him go.

And now there are Darwin, and Edison, and our old cat, Willis.

But losing Chance has been the hardest loss of all of our pets. We was a wonderful dog and friend, and I’ll miss him terribly.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 at 10:03 am and is filed under goldens!, pet therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.