{"id":4674,"date":"2015-08-17T04:49:54","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T04:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=4674"},"modified":"2015-08-17T04:49:54","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T04:49:54","slug":"good-bye-old-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=4674","title":{"rendered":"Good-bye, Old Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have had dogs in my life for as long as I can remember.\u00a0 We always had a dog or two on the farm and when one would die, another one would magically appear, it seemed.\u00a0 None of our dogs were registered. All were mutts, but all were good dogs, except Butchie.\u00a0 Butchie belonged to my oldest brother and he brought him to live at the farm when he couldn’t take care of him any longer.\u00a0 Butchie had been teased by neighborhood children and learned to bite as the result.\u00a0 More than once he chased the milkman to his truck and our neighbor to her car.\u00a0 I really think the milkman hit him on purpose one day and that was the end of Butchie.<\/p>\n

We had a little dog who went under the corn crib and birthed a puppy.\u00a0 My brother, Fred, came into the house one morning and said he heard a puppy crying under the corn crib, but he couldn’t reach it.\u00a0 Its mother had died and it was all alone under there.\u00a0 So I was selected to crawl under the corn crib as I was the smallest one around and bring out the puppy.\u00a0 It was a black and white puppy, almost like a dalmatian.\u00a0 I think our dog had been with one of our neighbor’s dogs that were dalmatians.\u00a0 Anyway, we brought the little puppy into the house and Mother wrapped her up and fed her warm milk with a bottle and we raised her like that until she could eat from a bowl.\u00a0 Mother named her Orphan Annie because she was an orphan.\u00a0 It became my job to feed her and care for her. Orphan Annie grew up to be a sweet little dog.\u00a0 She did have a few mishaps along the way.\u00a0 Like the time we kids were jumping out of the haymow into a bed of straw on the barn floor and I thought Annie should be able to jump, too, so I pushed her and her leg was broken and she was in a cast for several weeks and I was in trouble.\u00a0 Then she was out in the field when Daddy was mowing hay and got one of her legs cut off.\u00a0 She ran around on three legs the rest of her life.\u00a0 Seems that little dog had a hard life, but I think she was happy for the most part because we all loved her.<\/p>\n

Through the years I saw dogs come and dogs go.\u00a0 My brother’s favorite dog disappeared one day and he looked for him for weeks and one day he found him caught in a fence.\u00a0 Poor thing had died there all alone. I still feel bad about that.\u00a0 It was hard on my brother.<\/p>\n

When I got married, we didn’t have a place for a dog so we had none for a few years.\u00a0 Then we got one that immediately ran away and we never found her.\u00a0 We got a black Labrador and when we moved to where we live now, she was stolen from us.\u00a0 One of our boys was sure they saw her in the back of a pickup truck one day.\u00a0 I hope she had a happy life.\u00a0 So more dogs came and went.\u00a0 I decided I wanted another Labrador so we bought Bonnie.\u00a0 She was registered from a long line of registered dogs.\u00a0 Never having had a registered dog, we didn’t know what to expect, but they are just like any other dog.\u00a0\u00a0 Bonnie was a nipper at first and drew blood quite often until I broke her of the habit.\u00a0 After that, she became the sweetest dog. Right after we got her, we took a trip out west so we hired a dog sitter.\u00a0 I missed that dog so much the whole trip, even drawing pictures of her and writing about her.\u00a0 I know, I am weird, but I do get attached to my animals.\u00a0\u00a0 Bonnie loved to jump and play and run races around our old dog, Subaka, who was getting along in years.\u00a0 She was on her last legs when we got Bonnie and, you know, I think Bonnie kept her alive for another couple of years by playing with her.\u00a0 They would chase a ball all around the yard and field for what seemed like hours.<\/p>\n

When Subaka died, I decided I wanted another lab.\u00a0 This time we got a chocolate lab and named her Bellelattedah, Belle, for short.\u00a0 The day we brought her home, Bonnie picked her up and threw her over her head.\u00a0 Even after doing that, Belle and Bonnie became best buds.\u00a0 Sleeping together in the big doghouse or under the deck.\u00a0 Wherever one was, there was the other.\u00a0 And then we got Molly Marshmallow.<\/p>\n

Bonnie died last week.\u00a0\u00a0 It was one of the hardest days I have been through for a while.\u00a0 She\u00a0got up one day and could not walk on her back legs any longer and was gasping for breath, so I called the vet.\u00a0 They could not get her in and sent me to another vet three hours later.\u00a0 Bonnie did not have three hours and I called back my vet and said I wanted\u00a0them to take care of her “Now.”\u00a0 David and I put her in the back of his pickup truck.\u00a0 Her\u00a0last truck ride.\u00a0 She loved riding in cars and trucks.\u00a0 I stayed at home and cried.\u00a0 I knew\u00a0she was dying.\u00a0\u00a0 When David came home with her collar, I sobbed.\u00a0 The vet said her lungs had filled up with water.<\/p>\n

Bonnie will always have a piece of my heart.\u00a0 I will miss so many things about her.<\/p>\n

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I will miss this sweet face.<\/p>\n

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I will miss seeing three dogs looking at me through the back door.<\/p>\n

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Bonnie never became a mother, but her motherly instincts kicked in when we brought Molly Marshmallow home.<\/p>\n

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She seemed to enjoy the little puppy.<\/p>\n

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I will miss Bonnie’s sweet smile.\u00a0 She seemed to always be smiling.<\/p>\n

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I will miss Bonnie smelling the flowers.\u00a0 From puppyhood, she always was smelling the flowers in the garden.<\/p>\n

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I will miss feeding three dogs on the back deck.<\/p>\n

Some people will say, “she was just a dog.”\u00a0 Yes, she was a dog, but she was much more than that. She was a friend, a companion.\u00a0 someone who was with me even more than my husband.\u00a0 She was around 24\/7 always ready to come to me and be petted.\u00a0 Never angry, always happy.\u00a0\u00a0 She was family.\u00a0 She has made me smile so many times and only made me cry on her last day.\u00a0 No, her death is not as important as a grandparent’s, a parent’s, a sibling’s , a friend’s or any loved ones, all of which I have experienced, but she has taken a piece of my heart just like all the others did with her passing.\u00a0 I will miss her the rest of my life.<\/p>\n

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Good-bye, old friend.\u00a0I loved you.\u00a0 I don’t know if dogs are in heaven, but I sure hope I get to see Bonnie one day again.\u00a0 Bye.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have had dogs in my life for as long as I can remember.\u00a0 We always had a dog or two on the farm and when one would die, another one would magically appear, it seemed.\u00a0 None of our dogs were registered. All were mutts, but all were good dogs, except Butchie.\u00a0 Butchie belonged to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pets-i-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4674"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4679,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4674\/revisions\/4679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}