Goodbye

I just received a very difficult piece of mail.

Now usually I love opening the mail, I have a kickass letter-opener shaped like a little dagger with a huge diamante on the handle. I love it! And the admin chick in me loves reading & sorting the various bills, cards, etc. But as soon as I picked up this envelope, hand addressed, I knew what it was and held my breath.

"Good friends live in our hearts forever" was the message on the card, with a picture of a large dog nuzzling a kitten. Inside was a lovely message of sympathy for the loss of our "much loved little dog, "Chester". The card was from our local vet clinic, who were wonderful with him all the way from removing 7 decayed teeth under general anaesthetic back when he first came to live with us, to treating his heart condition, right through to the very end of his little life. Tucked inside the card was the final invoice for "Consultation/Examination, Frusemide Injection, Oxygen Administration and Burial of Small Dog." That last one made me well up.

I feel a bit bad that we didn't bury him ourselves but we are about to move house and it doesn't make sense to leave him in someone else's backyard. So we asked the vet to take care of it. Besides, I don't think either of us could have handled bringing his body home and burying it. I would rather just hang on to the memories.

Oh god now I am a blubbering mess...

Sorry this has been quite hard for me. Chester was my sole companion for the nine months that Adam was away, and while I did find him annoying at times, and the responsibility of feeding, medicating and walking him did sometimes get in the way of other things, he was the cutest possible dog that ever did live and I loved him very much.

He had been having good days and bad days for a long time, and I am glad that the day before he died was a really good day and we went for a big long walk down at the beach and both Adam and I spent some good quality time with him. The next day he woke up not so good, and had a seizure which was much worse than his previous ones. It was quite scary and I'm so glad Adam was there with me. We rushed him to the vet and they put him on oxygen, and were going to keep him there until they closed at noon (it was a public holiday), when we would have to take him to the animal emergency centre. We had just arrived back home when we got the phone call that his little heart had stopped.

Things we will remember fondly about Chester:

The way his little pink tongue would sit in the gap where his teeth used to be;
The way he would pounce on pieces of raw carrot I "accidentally" dropped while cooking dinner, rush them off to the carpet, and then dissect and/or devour them;
His crazy robot walk, ears back, legs just a blur beneath his body;
His huge big beautiful eyes;
The way he looked in his Superman suit;
The look of humiliation in his eyes while wearing the Superman suit;
His squeaking;
The way he would bark at dogs more than 10 times his size;
The way he would bark excitedly when Adam & I chased him round the house in a rather predictable game of chasey;
The way he never barked at any other time;
The way he would take himself off to his little bed;
The way he loved to curl up in clothes on the floor, particularly mine;
The way he would rest his little head on his paws and sigh as if to say "oh, life's so hard when all you have to do is eat and be patted";
The way he would prance around after doing a wee, so proud and fox-like;
The way he would only poo in the most uncomfortable places, like on a twig or weed or something really scratchy looking. And if he accidentally had to do it inside, he always chose a nice DVD cover or keyboard to do it on instead of the floor.
The way everything disappeared except for his eyes when he was wet.

There are probably a thousand other little memories we will have of Chester but I have gone on long enough. We miss you Chest!!! Have fun in doggy heaven...