10 years ago today, we brought Ralfie home to live with us. He was a skinny 2 year old rottweiler/black lab mix on his last day at the pound before he'd be put to sleep, and I remember on the way home I stopped at McDonald's to get him a cheeseburger, and then at the Cozy Dog for some ice cream. We were living in Laketown at the time, and we had to finish fencing in the back yard so he could be outside during the day. I think that lasted a month before I heard about a dog fighting ring in the area, and that dogs were being stolen right out of their yards, so he didn't stay outside by himself much more after that. When we moved to "the country", he had to be outside while we had the HVAC system upgraded, so Mama K came over to watch over everything, and she saw him bite the garbage man's pantleg (oops....the man was running through our back yard for some reason, and ran right into the path of a giant barking dog, by this point he had fattened up quite a bit! No blood shed, however, and the garbage man doesn't run through our back yard anymore). Other than that one incident, I don't think he ever snapped at anyone again.
We were going to name him Two, after the cage he came out of at the pound, but my Dad changed all that when the two of them met, and his name was Ralf after that.
Saturday morning I woke up to hear Ralfie panting really fast. Carl had to go meet someone, and I had plans to go to the farmer's market, but we'd been up really late the night before, so I decided to stay home. I took a shower, and when I got out Ralfie was lying on his bed, still panting. I sat down beside him and petted him a few times and got Carl on his cell phone, and Ralfie's heart stopped. And then mine broke.
We buried him out back, next to Lucy (underneath the bird feeders, natch). I know he's "just a dog", but you'd really have to know him to know that Ralfie was always more than that. He was a sweet puppy, always underfoot, never had a bad day, never held a grudge, always wanting to go along with whatever we were doing and I truly believe he never forgot that we saved him from certain death. He got to spend 2 weeks with his grandma this spring at "camp" while he had some melanomas taken off of his face. She was completely won over while he stayed with her, and also gave him the title "best dog ever". I don't know what was wrong with him other than those cancer spots, Friday he was his usually happy go lucky self, chasing Alice around the house and going to visit his other grandma.
He had a great life, 10 years longer than it might have been, but it still feels like his time with us was cut short. He went to geocaching events with us, the dog park, made many, many trips with us to visit my Mom and the goats, and enjoyed his life more than some people do. We used to laugh that there's nothing happier than a black dog warming himself in the sun on a perfect weather day. Ralf was the embodiment of loving life to the fullest.
Alice is doing ok, although she seems depressed, which I'm sure is perfectly natural. Our lives won't be the same for awhile, and some of our family routines probably won't ever be the same. However, our family has truly been blessed by having Ralf in it for as long as we got him.
Rest easy, bucko.
Posted by tomiandc at June 23, 2008 08:56 AM