Generation 1 dogs
2008
My colleague asked me today how many dogs have I had in my life. I had to count, from the time since I was a kid, I’ve had pets. So I guessed, it was 10 dogs in all. Of course the last 3 and the current 4 were and are the most special.
My niece and a close friend met on Sunday to discuss what to do with the ashes of my 3 generation 1 dogs. They were with me since I lived and worked here over the last 20 years (eek… it’s been that long).
Cheeky, mix lab who shared my bed since she was 5 weeks old. She had heart problems, was given steroids which caused kidney failure (I was too greenhorn a pet owner to understand how serious this side effect was). She was 20 when she died at home because she understood I didn’t want to put her down.
Teeny, my silky terrier. The little minx was an empress dowager who put terrorised my Cheeky and my rottweiler, Sonja. She lived a long life until 22 and would have been longer if cancer didn’t grow out of her eyes. In the end, my niece who had taken her under wing, decided to put her down.
Sonja, the sweetest rottweiler, who was big, had a head like a battering ram (she ran into my bad knee and injured it further). Her owner wanted her put down because her hind legs were not strong. Her vet Dr Tan saved her, took her in and I adopted her at 4 months old. She was seven when cancer took her too. This time it attacked her nerves at the base of her head. It must have been painful because she couldn’t move very much. There’s nothing I could do, no operation to save her. I had to save her again by putting her out of misery. I had her put down, but I couldn’t do it myself. Chicken that I was, I had my close friends take her to the vet. I wanted to remember her as she was and not when she was dying.
Cheeky, Teeny and Sonja broke my heart. They went about eight years ago, within months of each other. I’ve Cheeky’s ashes, my niece has Teeny’s and my good friend Cindy has Sonja (because Sonja saw her through an emotional period when her mother was ill).
The discussion was wether we wanted to set them free by distributing their ashes in the sea. I think rationally that was what we wanted to do but emotionally some of us weren’t ready. Meanwhile, I think of them almost every day, they were with me, not complaining, always happy to see me.
I loved everyone of them to death just as I do Latte (deputy pack leader), Uno, Sandy and Zack.
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