Best Boy

We had to say goodbye to our wonderful Edward this week. It was very hard.

He went in for a minor procedure that required anesthesia. Our vet called in the early afternoon to say he was having a hard time waking up and to pick him up a little later than arranged. When we got there, he still couldn’t walk. She had done an EKG and an x-ray, and it appeared that one of the drugs was probably the culprit. So she recommended we take him to the emergency clinic where they could administer an antidote and get him back on his feet.

However, the emergency vet discovered that unbeknownst to any of us, he had a tumor on his spleen, and that it had started bleeding. His morning procedure didn’t cause it, just coincidental. She said that there was a chance that the bleeding would start to clot and the blood be reabsorbed, so we settled in to be with him and wait.

Unfortunately that best-case-scenario did not happen. After about 7 hours we had to let him go, before his deteriorating situation caused him too much distress.

Edward was a very special dog. As much as I love them all, he was that dog that you get once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. 

From the day we brought him home, he was simply and purely a good boy. Housebroken at 9 weeks, easy to train, no serious issues. He was the last of nine puppies, 

and the folks we got him from said he was very shy and would hide when people came to choose a puppy. But I know he wasn’t hiding, he was just waiting for us.

He was the perfect little brother for our dog Lizzie, never taking her assertive ways amiss. I had to laugh at the description in my journal of her teaching him that all the toys in the house were hers. 

Once he was showing the proper respect, she let him have his own nylabones and rope toys. 

Ironically, we lost her in exactly the same way, a tumor on her spleen.

Edward was the perfect big brother for our Zoë. When we were somewhat past missing Lizzie, Zoë came along and immediately started whooping his ass. He loved it. 

I’m sure he also loved that he was big enough to jump over the barriers that kept her in the kitchen when those puppy teeth got too tiresome!

It’s part of our contract with these loving creatures that one day we will have to say goodbye. 

But before that day they bring so much love and joyfulness that the bargain is worth it. One of my favorite quotes is from the song “Two for the Road,” where it says, “Every day that you are mine will be a lovely day.” We forget sometimes to pay attention to the loveliness. Edward always reminded me, and so will his memory.