| | | <Car has a problem, need a plumber, carpenter, lawyer, real estate agent, and who gets the call? Investment advice? fuggadaboutit!>
That is so true... and fwiw, I love puns and have been writing/posting one every day on FB (about the only thing I do there)... they are both the lowest form of humor and (good ones) also the best/funniest of all types of jokes, though I also like "shaggy dog" jokes -- and my very favorite are long shaggy dog jokes that end with a pun!
My dog went unexpectedly... she was running around the back like she did her whole life... and then 10 mins. later, she came into my home office where we'd spent time keeping each other company every day since she was an 8-week old pup, lay down and then tried to get up, but couldn't... I was holding her in my lap and petting her, shooting some video and sending to the vet, on the phone with the vet, and she made a couple weird soft vocalizations and simply stopped breathing... I can barely stand going in there anymore and though it's getting a little bit better, when I'm in there and glance down at her "spot", I'm half expecting to see her there and start choking up a bit... vet called today saying her ashes are ready for pick up -- taking her body to the vet for cremation was one of the hardest things I've ever done... had to wait for my daughter to drive down
Ami -- french for "friend" -- was her dog originally (she bugged us unrelentingly at age 10 until I gave in -- I had three "unadoptable cats at the time), then she went off to college, etc... in reality, she was my dog... I spent all that time with her over the years, trained her, fed her, made homemade beds for her, went hiking in the mtns. and desert with her -- she saved me at least 4 times from red diamond back rattlers, the most dangerous in this region because they are too lazy to rattle and warn you that they are there, but Ami always saw/smelled them 6-10 feet out and would just sit down in the trail -- after trotting ahead of me on hikes -- so when she did that, I immediately stopped and looked around carefully until I spotted the snake... it was weird, with non-venomous snakes, she'd run right up to them and bark and try to play with them, sometimes getting them by the tail and slinging them around, or once in a while, get bit on her leg if she wasn't careful enough... I have no idea how she knew the difference between dangerous snakes and non-poisonous ones... and I never had to train her "sitting" response to the rattlers -- which is something you pay hundreds for typically to train dogs to do... she just did it -- surprised the hell out of me the first time she did it...
Definitely one of my best pets in life, tied with "my" dog I got when I was 10 and lived for 16 years... I've never been without a pet for more than a couple months in my life (I like both dogs and cats and have trained cats to act like a dog, fetching, hiking with me, etc. -- it's just easier somehow to bond with a dog)... not sure if I'll get another pet, but maybe in a couple months I'll feel different -- I've already been hanging out at the local Humane Society just to be around some dogs so maybe I'll just volunteer to help out there -- when I lived east of the Mississippi I was on the BOD of the Humane Society and always ended up with several "unadoptable" dogs and cats, e.g., 3-legged or already really old, etc...
Thanks everyone for the sympathies -- even just writing about Ami like this helps me and I promise this will be my last post about her... I've got to move on or go crazy... |
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