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A Tribute to Sammy and Betsy - the best dogs in our world.
Sammy, our Welsh corgi, first came to us (John and me) when our marriage was young. We were still learning to communicate and live with each other. Sammy brought understanding and unconditional love to our family. He was quite an independent type of personality, which was at first difficult to deal with. He was patient with us though and taught us how to understand him as well as each other. I was concerned when John said he would like to bring a female corgi home that he saw in a pet store at Fiesta Mall. A year had passed by, and I really felt Sammy was spoiled to having us all to himself. I wasn’t sure how he would react to an addition. After some convincing by John, I went with him to the mall and fell in love with the cute little girl, who could not keep her food from falling through the bottom of the cage. We bought her and took her home to meet Sammy. My concern was unwarranted, as the two of them bonded immediately. Betsy was Sammy’s little girl. Anyone who wanted anything to do with her, had to answer to him! Sammy and Betsy’s friendship flourished. They played together, but also kept each other in line. Between the two of them, they offered so much love and understanding. They loved to travel and see the world. They offered comfort and patience. They were so smart; they seemed to know exactly what we wanted or what we were going to do before we even knew it. As we moved from one place in the world to another, they stood by us and offered support, protection and companionship. Through the years, they took care of us in one form or another. Just when we thought that life would go on like this forever, Betsy came down with Lymphoma. She was just turning 9 years old; we could not believe that this was happening. After much discussion, we decided to give her chemotherapy treatments. We could not believe the way she responded at first. It was like she was a puppy all over again, full of vitality and playfulness. For six months it was like life was normal again, except for her weekly
visits to the doctor. Everyone at the doctor’s office just loved her and her
temperament, it seemed like she made friends wherever she went. Over
the 4th of
July we went to a family reunion, leaving Betsy and Sammy with their
grandparents. We were a little concerned to leave them with Betsy and her
condition, but their grandparents said how wonderful they were when we got back.
Things seemed to be back to normal, but three days later, Betsy suddenly got
really sick. After an examination, it turned out that she had contracted
diabetes (a side effect of the chemotherapy). At this point, we decided the most
humane thing to do was to put her to sleep. It was almost like she was waiting
for us to come back to say goodbye. She looked up at us, when we took her to her
last trip to the doctor, and seemed to be saying that she just wanted to sleep.
So that’s what we gave her, sleep. Sammy was heartbroken, he kept looking for his little girl and could not find
her. We could tell that he really missed her. Fortunately, the neighbor next
door has a dog and liked to bark to Sammy over the fence. Sammy soon would look
forward to his outings by the fence. Of course, he gave us solace as well. We
tried to lavish twice the attention on him to help him with his grief, which in
turn also helped us in our grieving process. Our family of three went on with life while missing our baby girl. Sammy was
10 at the time, so he was getting up in years. Our walks became shorter as his
legs became wobblier. In his last year with us, we got him a wheel type of chair
to assist him in walking. He particularly didn’t care for being put in the
walker; after all he was the independent sort. Once he was in, though, he was
off and running. This allowed us to have a few more walks together as he lost
mobility in his back legs. Sammy’s loss of back leg mobility at first seemed more of a minor annoyance
to him. He could scoot himself around pretty well with his front legs and didn’t
seem to mind it at all. He still had so much life in him, but as time went on,
we began to see him struggling more with his front legs as well. We went round
and round about the decision that we knew we had to make. He was so full of life
and seemed to try to ignore his incapacitation. He was coming up on 14 years and
still acted like he wanted to keep on going. We found, though, that he was
becoming more frustrated with his lack of mobility. While we were home and with
him, he didn’t seem to care as much, but if we left the house without him, he
left us reminders of his frustration. We finally decided that we needed to give him his freedom again. This was the
toughest decision we ever had to make. It was so painful to let him go. He was
so much a part of us, and our marriage. At this point though, we knew if we were
to hold on to him, we were being selfish for us, and not thinking of him. We
gave him a tearful good-bye as we sent him off running to the next world. We
hope to see both Sammy and Betsy at the Rainbow Bridge. |
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