My Friend Rosie – Rest In Peace

I’ve had part of this draft written for a while. I don’t usually post much about my personal life, but I decided that I might share a few photos of my pets so I made a rough draft. And then the photo prompt this week was friend, which seemed to be a good excuse to finally post this. However, around 9:00 yesterday morning, she passed away, so this is going to be a memorial post for her as well.

You may remember her from when I mentioned my pets on an award post:

Rosie, a couple of months ago.

This was 13-year-old Rosie (she would have been 14 in a few weeks). She went from seemingly happy and healthy on Sunday 23rd of April (she buried her doggie dish full of food. Again. 😜) to suddenly not being able to move on the 24th of April. I didn’t realize that eye-twitching and vertigo were symptoms of a heart attack or stroke in an animal, and she had had that happen twice before; so it’s very possible that she had a heart attack or stroke again, but we weren’t completely sure.

Sorry that it’s a bit blurry; I didn’t know how to use the camera very well back then, and I have few photos of her as a puppy.

For the first few days after that, she wasn’t able to drink on her own; I had to feed her with a turkey-baster. Then if I sat her up and propped her up with a blanket, she could drink and eat on her own. Finally, after a week or so, she could eat canned cat food that I mixed water with to make it more soup-consistency, and she enjoyed that immensely. (She loved fish. She really may have thought that she was a cat… XD )

You won’t find many photos of me on this blog, but I will share this one of me (or what you can see of me 😉) and Rosie from 2003. I dressed up this way because I wanted to see if she and her siblings would recognize me if I covered my face and added antlers. She didn’t, and I had to reveal myself when she threatened to eat me alive. 😂

I thought I would be faced with the decision to put her down when my mom and I brought her to the vet, but that wasn’t the case. The vet didn’t bring it up. I guess he could see that Rosie was a fighter and that she wouldn’t giving up even though she couldn’t move. The vet gave us some medicines to help with heartworms and help her get stronger. Lots of prayer and medicines later, she seemed like she might have been improving a bit.

Rosie wagging her tail

Rosie happily jumping on top of her doghouse

Rosie, looking at me.

This is what happened when Rosie woke up and didn’t realize it was me. Oops. XD

As you can see from the above photos in chronological order, she was getting gray with old age – especially in the face. XD

Rosie, on the way home from the vet in her igloo that I converted into a makeshift dog carrier. XD

People always told me to never get attached to the “runt” of the litter, because they don’t live long. Rosie didn’t only live long, but she outlived all seven of her siblings and seven of her half-siblings. Here is a shot of – in order from left to right: Buddy (the big one), Daisy (behind Buddy) Angel (kissing Buddy), Sugar, Freddie, I don’t remember – it has been too long 😂, Peekaboo, Rosie, and Lightning. The mother is Grunt. Yes, Grunt. This is proof that you never EVER let little-kid-me name a pet. EVER. 😂

I still remember the day I named Rosie though. She got into everything, and I think my line of thought was “Nosy Rosie” and it was quickly shortened to just “Rosie.” And she was that type. Curious.

Rosie not letting me take a photo of wildflowers.

The last few months had been hard for her. She got bit by a poisonous snake. The vet told us to give her some antibiotic and a Benadryl, and that took the swelling down. And then a large tree fell, crushing her fence. Thankfully she wasn’t crushed too. (It also could have crushed our car, van, or house but it didn’t. God is good!)

The dead tree and Rosie’s yard. She is on the left, and that’s her doghouse behind her. Luckily, there was a divider right to the left of where the tree fell. (We used to have another dog she didn’t get along with years ago, and when he died she got the whole yard.) If you look at the right top of this photo, you can see the tall stump where it broke.

I know she didn’t like not being able to move. And I know she missed looking for turtles. When she found one, she went all “STRANGER DANGER,” barking like crazy, making me panic – only to find that she was warning us about a turtle. 😜 Squirrels could pick the peaches, deer could graze, raccoons could wander around, cats could stroll past, birds could fly by – but turtles could not waltz by without everyone knowing about it. What was so bad about a turtle? I remember once when I found a turtle upside-down in her doghouse, with her asleep beside it while it was trying desperately to turn itself back over. I have no idea how she got her mouth around it to even do that. I rescued the poor thing, and when she woke up, she looked everywhere for her new “toy.”

Does this look like a scary face to you? (Also, note the mosquito flying around – that was an unexpected surprise. XD )

But I couldn’t give up on her. Even though she couldn’t move her tail, she was always so happy to see me, happy to eat, and just seemed happy overall. She loved peanut butter crackers for treats. I crunched them up so she could have some without choking, and she had some of that with ocean fish cat food around 7:30 yesterday morning. I left to do some other things for about an hour and a half (one of which was responding to comments and posting on here) and then my mom and I went back to check on her and she was gone. That fast. I think I’m still in shock over losing one of my best friends. But I know that she is in a better place, and I’ve been praying for the past month that if she died, it would be fast and painless, and it was.

I passed by her yard and it was so empty. No greeting. No barking. No tail wagging. Just an vacant doghouse and an lonely yard.

And as if Mother Nature knew this was happening, my red lilies bloomed yesterday morning, of all times to do so:

Isn’t that sweet? Blooming just for us? There was a part of me that wondered how Mother Nature could be so cruel as to try to bring cheer into such a sad day, but maybe, just maybe, they were celebrating her being free and entering the Kingdom of God.