Rest In Peace

This is a little tribute to our beloved dogs, Trixie and Jacques, who left this world today.  Every time I think I don’t have any tears left, a few more trickle down my face.  Like now.  I’m just so sad.

I keep remembering when I brought them home from the animal shelter.  When I first saw Jacques in that awful place he was terrified, shaking like a leaf and huddled against the cage door.  I stuck my finger through the chain link and petted him and talked to him and still he shook, but he looked at me with the saddest deep brown eyes as if to say “Please get me out of here. I’ll be a good boy, I promise”.  When I went to the desk I was told he already had two holds on him, and two was the limit.  The day he was scheduled to be released I went back anyway in the off chance the other two wouldn’t show, and they didn’t.  I scooped him up and brought him home and he was mama’s boy the rest of his life.  A sweet gentle old soul who would dance in a circle if you asked him to.  He’d do anything to please.

Not too many days later I decided Jacques needed a playmate, so back to the shelter I went.  From all the way across the yard I saw the biggest ears I’d ever seen and had to go see what kind of dog was attached to them.  And that’s when I met Trixie.  Nicholas and I struggled with a name for her because it needed to reflect the size of those ears: “Silly Rabbit!  Trix are for kids!”, and Trixie it was.  What a character she was.  Cute as a button, pretty darned sassy, and basically the Queen of all she surveyed.

They were the best of friends.

Last night someone opened my gate and the dogs got out.  I had to work so I couldn’t spend a lot of time trying to track them down, but I spent all day monitoring the animal shelter’s website, hoping to see them.  I called but they wouldn’t give me any information: all they said was “you’ll have to come look for them”.  So at 2:30 I left work and headed for the pound.  I stopped by the house to pick up their leashes in case they were there and also to check my messages to see if the shelter had called because both dogs had microchips.  Instead there was a message from a vet telling me they had Jacques.  I immediately called back, thrilled that at least one was okay.  They told me someone had brought him in and that they’d done everything they could but he’d been attacked by coyotes and didn’t make it.  The people who brought him in also told them there was another little dog with him, but she was already dead.  That was Trixie.

I keep replaying in my head what their last moments must have been like, and it’s killing me.  Killing me.

Who let them out?  Why would they do that?  Stupid kids thinking they were funny?  A broken heart isn’t funny.

Rest in peace, little babies.  You were very loved and you will be missed and our hearts won’t heal for a long time.  There’s a big hole where you used to live and it hurts.  But I’m not really sure I ever want it to close.  That’s YOUR spot.  And you’ll lay there forever, just like you used to do on my chest when it was bedtime.

We’ll love you forever.  Forever and ever, amen.

P.S.  Tell Simba we said hi and we still miss him, too, just like we’ll always miss you.  We love you.

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I’d like to thank the wonderful people who tried to save my baby.  I’ve spoken with the woman who took Jacques to the vet in an effort to save him, her name is Daneen, and she shared with me the last few minutes of his life.  God bless her, she was there with him when I couldn’t be.  She told me there was a family who had found him first and had wrapped him in a jacket and were comforting him when she and her friend Stan came along and rushed him to the vet.  She was even kind enough to call me back later and ask if I had any other questions about what had happened, and we talked for a very long time about lots of things, me very often with tears on my face and in my voice.  The woman is an angel and I wish there were more Daneens in the world.  If there is any good in this, it’s that I know there are people like her in the world.  It doesn’t bring my babies back, but it’s a comfort.  She told me Jacques stood up when he got to the doctor.  He was trying to make it home to mommy.  It was too late for Trixie.  God this hurts.