Good Night Sweetheart, It's Time To Go

Today we said goodbye to our Maggie girl.  We rescued her when the boy child was barely six months old and he is now nine.  At the time, she was 2-3 years old and had boobs hanging down to the ground from the six puppies she birthed days after being pulled from the pound by the rescue group.  She went through mastitis (I could relate painfully well, as I was dealing with that at the same time) after we brought her home.  She had seven BB's under her skin from being shot at by who knows what hateful person.

Maggie was a boxer bulldog, but was routinely mistaken for a pit bull with her brindle coloring and distrustful growl/bark, although she was good with the cats.  She assigned herself the post of guardian dog and took her job seriously.  When Owen was first learning to crawl, she repeatedly moved herself between him and the stairs so he could not go down them.  After Chloe was born, Mags routinely kept post in the hallway just between the two kids' rooms.  Rarely did a day go by where she didn't bark at someone walking by the house to make sure we knew who was around.  

Maggie had manners.  She was rarely a crotch sniffer.  She stayed out of the kitchen or dining room during our mealtimes.  She sat before she was allowed to eat her meals.  She was smart and knew hand commands to sit, stay and go (finger pointing OUT of the room).  She loved car rides and walks.  Maggie was also the stinkiest and noisiest hound we have ever known.  If she wasn't barking, she was farting (in her younger days, her gas would wake her up and she'd take off running like someone shot her in the butt, but slept through it in her later years).  And if she wasn't farting, she was snoring.  She has kept me company for a good nine years while I worked in my office every day with her sweet disposition and all of her noisiness.

Last night, she was unable to get up from her pillow and didn't make her nightly 7:30pm trek upstairs to the crate she so loved.  She was on the pillow, unmoved this morning.  A simple check by the vet found that there was a problem with her mid-spine.  X-rays confirmed that, but also showed a large mass on her spleen.  This last year has not been easy for her to get around.  Our stairs and hardwood floors have caused her to struggle and slow down.  And so this morning, we made the decision to have her put to sleep and we said goodbye through tears streaming down our cheeks as she laid in a patch of sunlight on a thick blanket.

Good night sweetheart, good night.