My dog, Buddy, died today.

This was him on the first day I brought him home a little less than a year ago. He had been wandering around the parking lot of where I worked with out any collar or tags. He was very intelligent, he was loving, and protective. Unfortunately, he had a lot of heart problems. When I found him he had an extremely bad case of heart worms (a common occurrence for strays in the mosquito-ridden south) but we cured it. That was on top of a birth-defect of an enlarged heart. Then thrown on top of that, he came down with some sort of infection in his heart and lungs a few months ago that we've been treating, but it was all just too much for him. He had a heart-attack today.

It hasn't been a good year for my family's dogs. About a two months ago, my sister had to have her boxer (her baby), Cora, put to sleep. She was only nine, but was suffering from a bad case of skin cancer that just had progressed too far too fast.

Back before Christmas, we had to put my family's elder dog, Gus to sleep. It wasn't as bad with Gus because he was nearly fifteen, and we knew it would be coming for quite a while.


I guess it's good that Buddy went now. My parents are going away for a month in about a week, so it's better that he went while they were still here to comfort him in his final hours than alone in a kennel, wondering where they were.



A song for a good dog: