Pixie, 1998-2010

One of my first words was "dog."  And one of my first requests was "I want a dog."  My whole childhood what I asked for consistently, every year, year after year, was a dog.  I remember one Christmas my parents got me this little mechanical dog that walked, barked as it sat down and then did a back flip... I was so pissed off.  I WANTED A REAL DOG.  the response I always got was "You can get a dog when you move out."

And so the Christmas after my 18th birthday, 12 years ago this week, I went to the EBR Animal Shelter and adopted the dog I always wanted and named her Pixie.  I have photos of these early years, but this was pre-digital, so I don't have any to post right now.

We house trained her and took her to obedience classes.  We picked apartments that were dog friendly.  We loved her very much.

Then we had a son and it changed.  Pets are like children when you don't have any.  I've never been offended when people compared pets to human children. But when we did have a human child, she went down a step.  This makes me sad.  Even now, we have two more dogs and I do not love them as much as I loved Pixie.

Pixie was a great dog.  She barked when people came to the door. She tolerated JD as he learned about soft touches.  Once JD was on the couch and actually jumped feet first onto her... she just got up and moved.  If she had bitten him it would have been justified.

She started getting older.  She got a UTI and during the vet visit we learned she had some kidney and liver problems.  She began getting a number of skin growths but the vet said they were probably benign and with her Kidney and Liver issues there was no reason to risk surgery.

We decided to let her retire and adopted a puppy.  Training the new puppy was so much easier with Pixie around than it was when we were training Pixie back in the day.  Then a year later another dog showed up in our front yard.  She tolerated both these intruders with about as much good humor as you could expect.  she got cranky for a while and then she started loosing weight.  She got more and more skin growths and we started seeing the writing on the wall.  This summer she had lost so much weight she was emaciated.  it was then we noticed that most of her teeth had fallen out.  she also had a horrible flea infestation that took us months and months to get under control.  One morning her face was swollen and there was a mass in her neck.  we took her to the vet and tried some treatments that helped with the swelling but we knew the time was fast approaching.  she a growth on her foot now that was getting bigger and bigger and looked like it might become an issue.

We put it off and put it off. But today, we took her to the vet and had her put down.  It was very very sad for all of us.  The growth on her toe was the size of a new red potato.  she had cataracts and couldn't hear.  There was still a mass in her neck.  she had numerous other skin growths and a persistent flea problem.  We did get some weight back on her but she was still very skinny and the cold made her joints hurt.

Just before working on this, I was walking down the hall and i saw the bed I made for her in-front of the dryer wear there were no drafts and the dryer heat helped keep her warm.  I broke down into hysterical crying so hard that I thought I might throw up.

This afternoon we took her out for one last day of fun to the dog park.  she didn't run and play but she did walk around and sniff the other dogs.  It was hard to decide when we had officially gotten to the point that it was time to put her down but not into the "we should have done this sooner." I think we struck the right balance but I have doubts on both sides.

This is Pixie all tuckered out from her visit to the park.